Girls Advisory Network

ACERT is collaborating with Agenda Alliance.

Agenda Alliance are calling on those who work with Gypsy, Roma, Traveller, Showmen and Boater (GTRSB) girls – such as teachers and teaching assistants, youth workers, and community groups – to support with recruitment to our Girls Advisory Network (GAN) session.

The GAN is an informal group of young women aged 14-18 who work with Agenda Alliance to develop what policy changes they ask of the Government and to campaign for a better world for women and girls with unmet needs. This session will be specifically tailored to GTRSB girls, for us to challenge the disproportionate rates of absenteeism and exclusions that they face.

Agenda Alliance will remunerate everyone who takes part, and will work with girls before and after the session to make sure they have everything they need and feel supported. The session will likely be held online, in October, and will last a maximum of two hours. If you know of anyone who might be interested in taking part, please contact their Co-Production Officer, Teddy.

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Science Travels

Marie Bowers, co-chair of ACERT, is Technician in Charge of the Physiology Teaching Lab at the University of Glasgow and a member of the Physiology Society. In a blog post, as part of the 150 voices of Physiology Series, Marie talks about how her colleagues in the Society have supported her in developing projects like “Science Travels”.

I now find myself identifying as a Romany woman, a teaching technician and a Doctoral candidate 

For the majority of my working life, I have been the only Romany in the lab, or at the conference, or at the outreach event. However, that can and should change to include members from our diverse communities of Romany and Travellers in physiology research and teaching.

The project aims to engage Gypsy, Traveller, Roma, Showman and Boater students in physiology and STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) more widely and educate our undergraduates and institutions about the communities and the health, education and societal inequalities they face.

Marie pays tribute to the members of the Physiological Society who have helped her develop the project and take it from a pub audience of Glasgow Skeptics, to Westminster, the Scottish Parliament and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. In her opinion, the Society is: “people willing to identify opportunities, to share information and to support the efforts of colleagues even when their ideas sound a little ‘out there'”.

The Physiological Society provides the space and the motivation to attempt this work. The Society helped me find my voice; my hope now is that it helps others to find theirs.

While expressing gratitude to her colleagues, Marie is realistic about the challenges that lie ahead.

There is work to be done; decolonisation of research and teaching, co-creation of research with underrepresented groups, and true recognition of the diversity of the physiology workforce.

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