Report from Diversity Committee
Report by Victoria Pearson, Chair of the Europlanet Society Diversity Committee.
The members of the Diversity Committee have focused their attentions lately on the EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019. Prior to the conference they worked closely with PCCS (their DPS equivalents) to identify further good practices that could be adopted at the conference.
A number of measures were put in place. These included:
- revising the existing Code of Conduct to ensure it included expectations about professional conduct;
- revising the guidelines for conveners to ensure diversity was considered when selecting presenters;
- adapting the chair guidelines to include consideration of professional behaviour and access for all participants;
- supporting the development of an incident reporting system for use by attendees.
At the conference, the Committee showcased the “Did this really happen?” cartoons and pronoun pins at the Committee’s booth, and hosted the – now annual – diversity keynote lecture, delivered this year by Nadar Haghigipour (University of Hawaii-Manoa).
The Diversity Committee and PCCS jointly convened the “Diversity and inclusiveness in planetary sciences” session. The Committee also supported the Allyship discussion meeting and the “Women in Planetary science Discussion Hour”, and with EPEC recorded a series of interviews to showcase diverse careers in planetary science.
The Committee is now reviewing feedback from the conference. We and welcome any additional contributions from the community so that EPSC 2020 and other Society meetings can build on the success of the EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019.
If you have any feedback, contact diversity@europlanet-society.org
