Winner: 2025 Inclusion and Diversity Prize
Professor Jennifer Leigh
University of Kent
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2025 Inclusion and Diversity Prize: for leading exceptional and innovative interdisciplinary evidence-based research addressing and highlighting systemic discrimination, and amplifying underrepresented groups to create intersectional and inclusive research cultures in chemistry and science.
Jennifer鈥檚 work is focused on raising awareness of and changing the lack of inclusivity, diversity and toxic research cultures that are prevalent within chemistry and science to stop anyone feeling excluded or as though they do not belong.
Science is often perceived to be objective and meritocratic, with the impact of structural barriers and unconscious bias ignored. People who are marginalised due to one or more intersectional factor are more likely to leave the chemical sciences, are slower to progress, and are less likely to have the opportunity to flourish and be successful.
For example, the systemic problems of harassment and bullying within scientific research cultures are magnified for disabled scientists. However, people without lived experience of these challenge do not always realise their emotional impact. Jennifer鈥檚 research offers meaningful ways for people to connect, find support and process their experiences. Uniquely, it also provides robust, empirical evidence that demonstrates the need for change and ways it can be achieved.
Jennifer鈥檚 aim is to engage with audiences in ways that allow them to connect emotionally with lived experiences of marginalisation, so they are motivated to drive forward change within the chemical sciences community. She does this through artistic outputs, including creative non-fiction, art, documentaries and video shorts.
Biography
Jennifer Leigh is a chemist turned interdisciplinary sociologist. Her work addresses and examines experiences of marginalisation in chemistry and science due to intersectional factors, including disability (ableism), gender, race and/or ethnicity, caring responsibilities and socioeconomic factors. Jennifer developed Embodied Inquiry, a transformative approach for capturing robust data, facilitating trust, creativity, community and the emotional connections required to motivate change. She applied it in scientific spaces with, rather than on, scientists to address and highlight the experiences of underrepresented groups that are often left unheard.
Jennifer鈥檚 embodied perspective has enabled her to challenge ableist and exclusionary assumptions, open discourses and change inclusion practices by raising awareness of intersectional marginalisation. For example, she was lead author on the National Association for Disabled Staff Networks鈥� STEMM Action Group white paper 鈥楾owards an inclusive environment for disabled researchers in STEMM鈥�.
She developed SupraLab, a SciComm channel dedicated to showcasing scientific life and highlighting work around equality/equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility (EDIA). She has also supported underrepresented researchers and instigated change in the UK, Europe, US, Ghana and South Africa. Jennifer has pioneered publications of empirical qualitative and creative social science approaches within top-ranked science journals, including Angewandte Chemie International, Nature 九州影院, Nature Reviews 九州影院, eLife, Chem and Chemical Science.
She has authored two edited books and three monographs, including Women in Supramolecular 九州影院: Collectively Crafting the Rhythms of Our Work and Lives in STEM (Bristol University Press). Jennifer鈥檚 next book How to Thrive in Laboratory Life is part of Routledge鈥檚 Insider Guide to Academia series.
I believe in the power of interdisciplinarity approaches to disrupt and act as motivators for action and change.
Professor Jennifer Leigh
Q&A with Professor Jennifer Leigh
Why is this work so important?
Science should be representative. Research environments and cultures should be accessible and inclusive, and everyone should feel like they belong and can have a visible influence over research. In order to achieve this, we need to raise awareness, bring about cultural change and inform public policy about the inequity and discrimination experienced by marginalised people.
Until equity, equality, diversity, inclusivity and accessibility are embedded within the systems and structures of science, underrepresented groups will continue to need to be championed. Achieving meaningful and long-lasting change will require things to be done differently. For example, through challenging traditional hierarchies of knowledge production within and across scientific disciplines and amplifying the visibility and achievements of underrepresented researchers.
What motivates you?
Not chocolate anymore (unfortunately).
What were the biggest challenges of this project/piece of work?
The pace of change in scientific research culture is slow. If we want meaningful change, we need to take a different approach. However, the political landscape around EDI/DEI is changing. For example, in the UK, funding to support disabled people is being cut, and internationally, programmes are being closed. Individuals and institutions are becoming risk averse, which is understandable as their personal and professional safety is under threat.
I find this challenging and worrying. People are going to be willing to do less, not more. We already know underrepresented groups are less likely to enter and more likely to leave, which is a considerable loss to science. If scientific research communities are made to feel more unwelcoming, I dread to think what the long-term impact will be. I am fearful of the damage this will do to progress.
Tell us about somebody who has inspired or mentored you in your career.
Networks of colleagues from WISC (the International Women and Inclusion in Supramolecular 九州影院 network), NADSN鈥檚 (the National Association for Disabled Staff Networks鈥�) STEMM Action Group and #WIASN (the Women in Academia Support Network) inspire me. They have proved invaluable sources of community, companionship, knowledge and support.
What has been a highlight for you (either personally or in your career)?
In 2020, I was Co-I on the British Academy APEX interdisciplinary grant, exploring how creative approaches could support women in chemistry. The project explored how collaborative autoethnography and film might support women in supramolecular chemistry to be reflexive and was one of the first pieces of work in the research programme I devised and led for WISC.
I used an unorthodox and transformative approach to capture robust data and facilitate trust, community and creativity throughout COVID-19, which opened discourses and changed practices in the field. We published empirical qualitative data in Angewandte Chemie International and Chem and were featured in Nature, Nature 九州影院 and 九州影院 World.
As well as impacting individual participants, each of whom attributed an increase in research outputs, grant successes or career progression to the project, comment pieces in Nature Reviews 九州影院 on 鈥楶regnancy in the lab鈥�, 鈥楶lanning a family鈥�, and 鈥楲istening to fathers in STEM鈥� reached over 3 million online. One person contacted me to say: 鈥淚t meant a lot to me that I'm not alone in this struggle鈥�.
I synthesised creative non-fiction accounts that were 鈥榯rue鈥� but not 鈥榬eal鈥� to avoid dangers of whistle-blowing, blame or pity evoked by real-life case studies. These were published in the open access book Women in Supramolecular 九州影院: Collectively Crafting the Rhythms of Our Work and Lives in STEM (Bristol University Press) and shared at international conferences. People told me it was like hearing their own story and as a result they felt less isolated, or that they had never realised the emotional impact of marginalisation before. People were motivated to take action and drive change within their communities.
I developed the research on health group cultures and worked with bioscientists to adapt it into a programme addressing attrition in a doctoral training partnership. This was reported in eLife and has since been successfully piloted with undergraduate students.
I directed a 12-minute documentary, Marginalisation in Science: Women in Africa, to support Black chemists, women and scientists located within the Global South with NGO Empowering Female Minds in STEMM and initiated a multi-institutional consortium between Kent, York and Salford to tackle systemic racism. WISC鈥檚 research exploring the embodied, lived experiences of chemists who were the first generation in their family to access higher education (First Gens) was published in Chemical Science in 2025.
What has been a challenge for you (either personally or in your career)?
I rarely meet anyone quite as interdisciplinary as me: my first degree is in chemistry, my doctorate is in social science (education), my research focuses on embodiment and uses arts-based methods, and I have held academic positions in psychology, higher education, and am currently based within sociology. As a state-school educated, disabled woman from a minority ethnic background, I turned down a chance to read chemistry at Oxford because people made me feel I did not belong.
I completed my undergraduate degree with a young child but left a computational chemistry PhD unfinished while expecting my second. For many years I became one of those RSC statistics 鈥� a woman and mother who had left chemistry and science completely. I came back much later after training as a yoga teacher and movement therapist, working in private practice, community engagement and art.
I completed a part-time PhD in four years alongside a PGCE in secondary science, a PGCHE, and while single-parenting two children. I secured two postdocs in psychology, then spent nearly 12 years in higher education research and academic development, before moving into sociology and focusing on marginalisation in chemistry and science.
My lived experiences of many of the barriers facing underrepresented groups made me realise that science is riddled with unacknowledged unconscious bias. Scientists are not often taught how to be reflexive. We can see the impact of individual privilege, systemic and structural barriers in the gender disparity and lack of people who are openly disabled or from ethnic/racial minorities.
The reality of being truly inter- trans- cross- or multi-disciplinary is sometimes you just don鈥檛 fit anywhere. Interdisciplinary research is often harder to fund, publish, assess and use as the basis for building a career. However, I believe in the power of interdisciplinarity approaches to disrupt and act as motivators for action and change.
What does good research culture look like/mean to you?
A good research culture is positive and inclusive. It is an environment where people can flourish. It should be free from racism, ableism, sexism and any other form of discrimination. Creating cultures like this requires change and addressing the so-called 鈥榩ipeline鈥� for underrepresented groups.
I established a SciComm channel, SupraLab, to release short documentaries and video shorts from people in all walks of life sharing their experiences. Efforts like this help make science and research more equitable, accessible and inclusive, and are essential to increase public understanding and engagement and encourage diversity.
We recognise the importance of valuing all members of our community; we believe that for the chemical sciences to prosper, they must attract, develop and retain a diverse range of talented people.