Professor Lesley Cohen and Dr. Wayne Mitchell will be taking up the role of Associate Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) from 1 September 2023, for a term of two years.
Reporting to the Provost, as the Associate Provosts (EDI) Professor Cohen and Dr. Mitchell will share the duties of the post, bringing additional capacity to support the EDI agenda. They will lead on the EDI strategy, in line with Imperial’s wider strategy. They will champion EDI across the Imperial community, helping to facilitate cultural change.
Professor Lesley Cohen
Professor Cohen is Professor of Experimental Solid State Physics in the Department of Physics, Faculty of Natural Sciences. Since joining Imperial in 1991, she has held several leadership positions, including Consul for the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Education Office, Head of the Experimental Solid State Physics Group, and Director of Postgraduate Studies for the Department of Physics.
Professor Cohen was responsible for setting up the Juno Committee in the Department of Physics, which was the key factor in the department being the first in the country to be awarded both Juno Champion status and an Athena Silver Swan Award. Professor Cohen was the first Faculty of Natural Sciences Academic Ambassador for Women. She was also the first recipient of the Julia Higgins Medal in recognition of her activities to promote transparency, equality and employment best practice in Imperial.
Dr Wayne Mitchell
Dr Wayne Mitchell is Senior Teaching Fellow, Senior Welfare Tutor and Graduate Teaching Assistant Coordinator in the Department of Immunology and Inflammation, Faculty of Medicine. He first joined Imperial as a Research Fellow in 2005, and returned in 2015.
Dr Mitchell is the EDI Champion for the Department of Immunology and Inflammation. He chairs the Imperial As One race equality network for staff and postgraduate students, and he was a member of Imperial’s Race Equality Charter Self Assessment Team and History Group.
In 2022, Dr Mitchell co-hosted the Black Graduate Career Conference (BGCC). As a result of the international connections he made, he established a collaboration to conduct research on the impact of Black Lives Matter on people of colour in higher education. This collaboration resulted in Imperial hosting the first Symposium on Transatlantic Racial Reckoning (STARR): Imagining Anti-Racist Academic Worlds earlier this year.