Outstanding ED&I Champion - Researcher: Lucy Taylor

An award made to a researcher who has shown outstanding dedication, sustained commitment, and effective leadership in advancing equality, diversity and inclusion. To confirm, this category includes students.

Lucy Taylor is the MPLS inaugural ED&I Fellow for the Zoology department. Lucy’s nomination reads: “Lucy is a tireless advocate for mental health and equality for early career researchers, and her involvement and activities have made a real difference to all our lives. She is open, honest, resourceful, and extremely dedicated to ED&I. Although I am not in her department, she has been a constant source of inspiration to me and shows me how to be a better advocate for my fellow ECRs both within Statistics and MPLS. I would not be able to do justice to the range of Lucy’s activities that focus on our collective wellbeing - listing them alone would use up the word limit of the nomination - but I will highlight some particularly impactful actions. Within her department, Lucy has single-handedly run the Mentoring and Support scheme for graduate students, including support for the very trying time under lockdown. She organised online socials to combat isolation, including one during the Christmas break. She trained as a mental health first aider. She has written multiple Nature Career columns and is active on social media about what it really means to go through the ECR journey. As an ECR representative, one of her first actions was to push for a no detriment policy for postdocs.”

Thank you, Lucy, for your continued dedication to ED&I.