Improving EDI in funding and prizes - What are the challenges and how do we overcome them?

We're continuing the project to ensure that our funding and prize processes reflect our commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion by identifying and addressing potential gaps and biases.

BISA has been awarded funding from the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) and ESRC EDI partnership to further our work on implementation of our Equality and Diversity Policy and strategy. Part of the funding is allocated to do work around the collection of EDI data for the eleven prizes and three funding awards we make annually. The data collection will help us better understand the demographics of applicants and recipients and will be essential in guiding future improvements in our processes. Through this, we aim to:

• Ensure our awards are accessible to all, regardless of background.

• Recognize and celebrate diverse contributions to international studies.

• Continuously refine our policies to better support equality and inclusion.

In this article, BISA EDI Officer, Laura McLeod, reflects on the challenges facing BISA – and potentially other professional associations in academia - in collecting EDI data via surveys.

It might seem curious that BISA didn’t already collect Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) data for prizes and funding. Upon becoming the EDI Officer I quickly realised why: there are several practical and intellectual challenges making collection of EDI data trickier than it seems.

As a charity, BISA must use its limited resources carefully. Tasks including creation of anonymised forms, ensuring the forms were correctly sent to those applying for funding or nominating and the nominees for prizes, then processing, cleaning and presenting the data collected anonymously is time-consuming. Funding from the AcSS-ESRC EDI partnershippaid for a data intern to do this work between October 2024 and March 2025, making it possible to take on this project.

In my first blog post I talked about how collecting EDI data needs to be meaningful and not a bureaucratic exercise. To begin the process, we opted to run a demographic survey of those applying for grants or nominated for prizes. A demographic survey of personal characteristics has limitations: it doesn’t capture some dimensions of power that create or sustain structural oppressions and injustices. it is difficult to capture processes of discrimination and prejudices that impact career opportunities and progression.

Because of the relatively small possible response rate and the need for anonymity, we are unable to analyse the data to reveal intersections within a single prize or grant application(although we could identify some intersections from the entire pool of responses). Nevertheless, our aim with running a survey was to give a sense of current demographic characteristics of applicants to see if patterns start to emerge with respect to who is applying and not applying for awards. The process of agreeing on the survey form involved several BISA trustees and revealed the considerations I describe below.

First, we did not want the survey to be too long – as academics ourselves we know how busy everyone is – and so we had to decide what questions we would not ask. Some choices were obvious: given the applications already have minimum educational requirements (e.g. the Micheal Nicholason Thesis Prize requires a completed PhD), we didn’t need to know what the highest qualifications held by applicants were. Such questions are typical of a demographic survey but were deemed irrelevant for our purposes.

Second, we wanted to collect information specific to the process. For all prizes where applications could be nominated, we sent a short survey to the nominator too, asking what role best described their position (e.g. Publisher, Head of Department, colleague, colleague with responsibility for external awards). Our hope was to have an insight into who is doing the work of nomination and how that affects outcomes. Are institutions who build in this work into departmental service roles more likely to nominate people? Who nominates strong candidates that don’t fit ‘norms’ in our profession? This data could inform how we communicate opportunities to ensure the widest range of people are applying for awards.

Third, we wanted to collect demographic data relevant to the profession and the specific dynamics of BISA. For instance, we asked about institutional type as we had a hunch that this would also impact on the opportunities applicants could access. We also know that BISA has many members who are not in the UK – also eligible to apply for prizes and some funding -and so when creating the categories for response we avoided UK-specific descriptors (such as Russell Group, post-92).

Fourth, as alluded to, deciding on what categories to use required thought. All too often, gender identity questions offer binary male/female options. We offered these categories: male, female, non-binary, prefer to self-describe, and prefer not to say. ‘Prefer to self-describe’ was intended to allow for recognition of a multiple range of gender identities without providing a long list – where we could miss some – counts of variations of gender identity range from 10 to as many as 110 (and beyond). Gender identity is potentially sensitive information and the inclusion of ‘prefer not to say’ is considered good practice.

Finally, there were things that surprised us (and maybe seem obvious in hindsight). For instance, the survey form for the two book prizes failed to account for co-authored books, where multiple authors will have different responses to the demographic questions.

We also needed to get a sense of demographic information as a snapshot, even if annual data collection proves impossible in future years. To act we also need to understand lived experiences. That is why as part of this project, we hired an EDI consultant to run a broader membership survey, and we would welcome your thoughts about EDI in funding and prize applications. Please complete the survey, which closes on 18 May 2025 – it should take only 15 minutes of your time.