Equalities @ EECS

My name is Ines, I am 17 and currently in Year 13.  

I study politics, computer science, and mathematics, and my favourite varies each week. In politics, I enjoy studying and learning about political ideas and concepts, especially feminism! I also really like the feeling of success when I solve a complicated mathematical problem right, or when my program runs for the first time. 

Almost everyone in my computing class does maths, but nobody in my year does computing and politics. Only two other students do politics and maths. Mixing humanities and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is not incredibly uncommon, but I still get confused looks whenever I tell someone my subject choices.  

In my primary school there was a computing extracurricular activity, that I did from 6 years old until I finished school. From then, I just kept choosing it, for my Year 9 early options, to GCSE, to A level, and now as a university course! I never had any specific inspirations, I just knew that I really enjoyed programming, and I was not going to let myself be driven out of it.  

I recently finished the coursework required for my Computing A level. I created a booking system for a hotel. It was pretty hard, but I managed to learn, through many YouTube videos and hours on stack overflow, many different skills that I could not have even fathomed a year ago.  

I chose to apply to a university in the the UK because I like the way the courses are structured. I really like the fact that it is possible to choose from niche modules in later years, but the foundation is set out first. I also really enjoy the London atmosphere and would love to be a student here. 

It is accepted that computer science is the future, for better or worse. Cash is being replaced with cards, cashiers with self-checkouts, and so on. There is not a single area of life that has not been impacted by technology, and that will not continue to be. 

I enjoy coding but have not really settled on a specific area. In university, I would like to focus on AI and learn more about it. I would like to do a masters, but I am not sure of the program yet. Hopefully, I will have the chance to this abroad, to experience a different university life. Having a specific goal really helps me stay motivated. Right now, it is reaching my predicted grades so I can get into my top university choice. 

I attended a couple of the Girls in Tech courses run by Queen Mary. In one, we were taught about HTML and C#, and the other one was a discussion between different women in Tech industries found them interesting and they made me feel scared of the computer science environment.  

Outside school, I take guitar lessons and really enjoy listening to various kinds of music. I also tutor maths and bake a lot. 

My Computer Science class is 17 boys and 2 girls, which can be very overwhelming at times. Sometimes it can feel like we are ‘other’ in a class where the teacher enables dubious conversations on women. However, I really do like Computing and that love, and my stubbornness outweighs the negative feelings. If not you who, and if not when? 

When I was a child (I was born just 10 years after World War 2 ended) there was no word we used for the genocides that Nazi Germany committed. To a large extent, these things weren’t spoken of. My best friend Paul’s mother Lorli (they lived down the road) “came to England as a child”. It was years later that the Kindertransport came into public discourse and I realised that “Auntie” Lorli was one of these children. It turned out that Paul’s father Harry also escaped Germany just in time. Neither of them saw their parents again. Apparently, I discovered just last year, Harry saw some action in France, helping the resistance, but that’s another story. (My own ancestors came from Russia/Poland around 1900, fleeing from an earlier brand of anti-Jewish persecution.)

Nowadays, we have Holocaust Memorial Day, which every year is on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But HMD isn’t just for Jews – nor is it all Jews have, of which more later. HMD commemorates all the peoples who just weren’t ‘right’ for the Nazi version of the world: Roma, Sinti, LGBT+ and others were all persecuted, impoverished, enslaved and murdered. And it’s vital to remember that HMD is also there to commemorate the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. This is because the Nazis weren’t the first to commit genocide and aren’t the last.

Jews also have our own day to remember. We call it Yom Ha’Shoah (Yom is Day, Shoah is Holocaust). It’s held in Spring on 27th of the month of Nisan, which by the Jewish calendar is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Both this and HMD are special, solemn events and I hope you don’t mind that we keep one for ourselves, while fully and completely supporting the world’s memorial on 27 January.

It’s worth remembering that anti-semitism is getting stronger. It doesn’t go away, it ebbs and flows just like any other human disease. There are those who deny the Holocaust happened and others who say it is vastly exaggerated. And on our campuses, anti-semitism is on the rise: there’s been a 22% increase in anti-semitic acts in the last two years, up to 150 across 30 universities. That’s reported incidents, and includes physical assaults as well as acts perpetrated by academics!

I am proudly a supporter of the Anne Frank Trust, which doesn’t teach only about the Holocaust. It goes into schools and helps young people aged 9-15, to understand all forms of prejudice, to learn how to challenge it, and to change lives for the better. Perhaps you might like to make a donation.

Shalom

Mark Sandler 27.1.23

What does a director of wellbeing do?

Initially I didn’t know what I was going to do. It sounded exciting to be known as the director of wellbeing but I had not figured out what the Director of wellbeing can do for EECS. The role was focused on the wellbeing of students and staff.. I am a firm believer that we need supportive and non-judgemental space in the classroom. Two years ago, when I started as director of wellbeing, I did not know what the job should be. All I did know was that I now had a formal platform for my counselling training and to support students not just within my modules but outside as well. How I was going to do that felt overwhelming as EECS has huge student numbers. Working as a lecturer but felt I could do more than just supporting students in the classroom. I wanted to do more about pastoral care. Steve created the role as he firmly believed that wellbeing should have its place at EECS and at QMUL and as he predicted, today we have the new NSS questionnaire with wellbeing questions!

Tell me about that wishlist

Firstly I wanted to create a culture with wellbeing in focus. I want staff and students at QMUL to feel safe to talk about wellbeing and mental health without being judged. The culture should make it OK to say that you are struggling. I really feel that this change is happening now. When I’m struggling (and I do) I voice it.

Secondly I wanted buy-in on this with complete support from the head of school and from senior management. The National Student Survey was a useful lever to emphasise that this is actually important to our success.

Thirdly, I wanted to create mental health champions. Some students are in a better place after getting support and some want to help others. This idea of peer-assisted-support can be really valuable.

What did you do before you worked at QMUL?

I came from Sri Lanka to Liverpool where I did an undergraduate degree in economics in the 90s. I found the university was a really supportive place with lecturers being genuinely supportive. I went on to an MBa in Cardiff and an MSc and PhD at Kingston. However, I struggled with my own mental health, stress and my wellbeing. It affected my studies during my PhD. I was encouraged by your supervisors to get support which helped a lot. A lot of staff at QMUL don’t know that my qualifications are in business and management, not in engineering or sciences. I used to feel self-conscious and had a bit of imposter syndrome. I still do have moments when I need to challenge myself to work through my lack of confidence. But when I’m with my students teaching or supporting them in wellbeing that’s when I feel I’m in my element. This is part of why I wanted to continue my professional training as a counsellor.

Tell me about your counsellor training

I started five years ago. I want to have a better understanding of mental health and wellbeing, to understand myself better and to understand how to help people. I did foundation courses with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) as a modality based, person-centred counsellor. I’m currently in my final year of a diploma that will enable me to practise as a counsellor. As part of my training I work in a secondary school as a counsellor and also do adult counselling related to trauma, bereavement and stress.

Who are your services for?

I provide help for undergraduates, PhD and Masters students. My office provides a safe place for them to talk about their struggles. Academics and advisors are typically not trained in mental health interventions and they aren’t all comfortable with that.

What advice would you give to a staff member when a student has mental health problems?

They should clarify boundaries and work within their limits. Ask yourself, “Are you comfortable to do this?” If not the sign post this to the student and don’t feel pressured to provide support you are not comfortable with. Advise the student about routes which they can get help: Mahesha as wellbeing director can provide help and advice. QMUL has an advice and counselling service (but this is very oversubscribed) and I can provide help in the interim. I am able to provide biweekly (every two weeks) meeting sessions for students who want to talk to me. Any student who emails me asking for a wellbeing meeting I try and meet them during the same week for a 1-1 meeting

Tell me about the “Student Voice” boxes (small purple boxes) around campus? What do you get from these?

Students leave anonymous messages in the purple boxes around ITL. On Fridays Steve and I do a live zoom call where we open the box and discuss the contents. It’s still very new. We get all kinds of messages: “I’m struggling and don’t know what to do” I give the student advice about where they can get help and who they can reach out to. “I’m being bullied” I help them find places they can reach out to. QMUL has a confidential and anonymous reporting mechanism for this.

While it is early days, I have a very positive feeling about this. I would like to add that its great that students see our live reactions especially to see how the head of school is making time every week on a Friday to go through their boxes is very powerful. What we are in fact saying to them every week is “you are not a number in the crowd, if you want your HoS to hear what you have to say and see how he addresses it then here is the opportunity”.

This is a new initiative our team thought would help boost the reading of books with an EDI angle. We plan to bring new recommendations monthly to this blog, so please feel free to send your recommendations and a paragraph on the book to e.shatri@qmul.ac.uk.

We start with the very first recommendation by Luca Marinelli, a third-year PhD student at EECS. 

Intersectionality (Key concepts 2nd edition), by Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Cambridge, UK, Polity Press, 2020 
 
After being coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s, the term “Intersectionality” has been much discussed over, to the point where it recently entered mainstream media and became a buzzword. Hill Collins and Bilge help us clear things up a bit. For them, intersectionality investigates how intersecting power relations influence social relations across diverse societies and individual experiences in everyday life. As an analytic tool, intersectionality views categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, class, nation, ability, ethnicity, and age – among others – as interrelated and mutually shaping one another (ibid, p. 2). Intersectionality is then both a critical method of enquiry and a praxis, through which we understand power relations of race, gender and class, for example, not as discrete and mutually exclusive, but as building on each other and working together. 

Rather than focusing on academic discourse, the book offers us several case studies and helps us understand how intersectionality was transformed as it travelled to Europe from the USA. They achieve academic rigour remaining all the way through extremely accessible to students, as theory and praxis always go hand in hand. In this much-needed introduction, Hill Collins and Bilge warn us against watering down intersectionality to corporate diversity talks, thereby losing sight of what is important, namely, social equality and justice.

On September 16th, Naomi Arnold from the Networks Group in EECS attended the Grace Hopper Celebration’s Open Source Day. This is a virtual all-day hackathon celebrating women who work in open source software. Open source software still has huge under representation of women with, by some estimates, less than 10% of open source contributors being women.

Naomi represented the Raphtory project. a collaboration with QMUL, the Alan Turing Institute and Pometry. Raphtory was showcased in the Open Source Day alongside some well known projects like Matplotlib, Open Street Map and Node.js. The objective of the event was to celebrate women in computer science and help first-time contributors get into open source with a variety of workshops to get involved with. Naomi said: “It was great to have some users testing the Raphtory software and get some feedback about the user experience with getting started, and we got some issues resolved and cool features implemented that we’d struggle to find time to do just within the core team.”

John Xavier Riley

Tell us about your work at QMUL?

I’m a 3rd year PhD student in the Artificial Intelligence and Music (AIM) program at the EECS school. My research centres around automatic music transcription using a variety of methods and approaches. I enjoy the work – I’ve not been particularly successful so far in terms of publications but I feel like I am making some progress.

Many people feel like they have to choose between doing their research or having a family, Is it possible to be a full time PhD student and raise a family?

It is very difficult – my financial situation is relatively comfortable (see below) and my wife isn’t currently at work which allows her time to focus on our two children. Even with these considerable advantages, it can be hard to be available to my family and be fully present for my research at the same time. I certainly struggle to work with the intensity that some of my high-performing peers seem able to achieve.

The other aspect I find difficult is the idea of a future within academia. I’m 36 and settled in my current location which means that academic jobs within travelling distance of my house are very limited. I’ve basically abandoned the idea of continuing my research after the PhD program ends because I don’t see it as being compatible with providing for my family. This is a personal choice though – I wouldn’t expect everyone to feel the same way.

The past three years with Covid have been difficult for most, how did it change the dynamic of research for you being at home with your family?

I had been working remotely for 7 years prior to starting the PhD so in that sense it wasn’t a big change. I do feel like my cohort is more isolated in terms of their research interests. The cross-pollination of ideas that you get from attending lectures together, eating lunch together etc. seems to be reduced as a result of covid for us. Being at home with my family can be challenging at times in terms of focus and finding uninterrupted spells of time to think but I feel like I just have to make the best of it.

How difficult is to financially support your family while on a PhD stipend?

My financial situation is unusual – I don’t have a mortgage. I’m also able to supplement my funding through savings that I made from a career prior to starting the PhD although we try to keep these for capital expenses instead of day-to-day living. Even so, it has been challenging and we’ve had to make cutbacks on non-essential items. I understood this going into the PhD though and I’m anticipating that it will be worth it on returning to work afterwards.

Teo Dannemann

Tell us about your work at QMUL?

I am a Media and Arts Technology PhD student since 2019, funded by Chilean Research Council. My research interest lies in collective music performance and to elucidate the synergies (or emergent properties) that come up from this. A specific main question in his research is: how human music interaction differs from human-computer interaction?

Many people feel like they have to choose between doing their research or having a family, Is it possible to be a full time PhD student and raise a family?

Not in current conditions. There’s a lot you have to give away on both sides, you end up sacrificing time on your PhD because you have to do extra work for maintaining the child costs (especially nursery, around £1200 monthly for a full-time nursery).

The past three years with Covid have been difficult for most, how did it change the dynamic of research for you being at home with your family?

Living in London, it was quite difficult, as we had to live in a one-bedroom flat the three of us, with the newborn crying around couldn’t focus to do work very often. Then we decided to move outside of London where we could afford a bigger place and it was much better, but then the commuting time and costs appeared…

How difficult is to financially support your family while on a PhD stipend?

Don’t want to sound exaggerated, because in our case we are lucky that we could get help from family during difficult times, but otherwise it gets dangerously difficult to be a parent with a PhD stipend.

What kind of financial help have you looked either from QM or other parts?

QM basically has the hardship fund, which I applied for and didn’t get. Then I looked for government help and the main help is called Tax Free Childcare, for which I am not eligible as your income (i.e. the stipend) has to be taxable in the UK. Therefore, externally (overseas) funded students are at a particular disadvantage for applying this kind of funding.

There is a new centre in EECS for supporting staff in their Scholarship activities!

The initiative started in January 2022 when Marie-Luce launched a survey of all Teaching and Scholarship (T&S) staff about what the Scholarship part of their role is and whether they understood that aspect of the role. Although Scholarship is a contractual requirement for T&S Staff, they often felt unsupported in this aspect of their role.

A discussion group was then set up to provide a space for staff on T&S contracts to get together and discuss, share, get informed, and engage in “Scholarship”.

So what is Scholarship? Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (or SOTL) has been defined as: “the evidence-based study of teaching and learning, which is focused on student learning, grounded in context, methodologically sound, conducted in partnership with students, and publicly disseminated”. Engaging in Scholarship requires from staff to transition from discipline-based research to SOTL, a difficult transition if not adequately supported

Staff on T&S contracts, predominantly women, often find it hard to progress their careers, as the Scholarship aspect has often been poorly recognised and promoted and is not well understood. The higher teaching load often leaves them little time for engaging in Scholarship, which impinges on their career prospects.

In the last 6 months, a mailing list (eecs-scholarship@qmul.ac.uk) has been created and regular discussion meetings have been held about what is meant by scholarship and for sharing what staff have been doing or would like to collaborate on in the future. For example, talks on compassionate pedagogy, learning analytics and techniques for teaching such as creating hybrid online/in person lab sessions have been held. Early July, an away day for sharing experience and encouraging engagement in Scholarship took place.

The group is becoming an official centre within EECS with approval of senior management. Staff on T&S contracts will be automatically enrolled on the mailing list but other people interested can contact Marie-Luce (marie-luce.bourguet@qmul.ac.uk). A website is being created to give visibility to the centre. The new centre should really increase the promotion prospects and clarity about the nature of scholarship and be a genuine boon for anyone on a T&S contract.

The mission statement for the Centre (resulting from many discussions and brainstorming over the last 6 months) is to: create a space for discussion of Scholarship; provide peer support and mentoring; increase the visibility and recognition of T&S staff; create opportunities for collaborations; impact quality of education in EECS and at QMUL; align Scholarship activities with EECS and QMUL education strategies.

The Scholarship Centre will “give a home” to T&S staff and support their career development. It will improve the visibility and impact of their Scholarship within EECS, at QM, and beyond.

This event is being organised by Mona Jaber (m.jaber@qmul.ac.uk) and aims at students in electronic and communication engineering who want to:

1. Meet and hear about the latest technologies and research by leaders in the field,
2. Get advice about career paths and opportunities by representatives of major communication companies,
3. Have the opportunity to present and discuss their work with leaders in the field by participating in a poster competition

Click here for more information and registration.

CALL FOR POSTERS

Enter the competition and win a free registration at an IEEE ComSoc Conference of your choice!

The technical program committee is soliciting contributions for an afternoon poster session devoted to recent results. We especially encourage students and junior researchers to participate. There will be no published proceedings. Any contribution in the general area of electronic or communication engineering is welcome.

Extended abstracts (2 pages maximum, double column, IEEE style) for the poster session should be submitted with WIE-CDD-Poster in the subject to Mona Jaber at m.jaber@qmul.ac.uk. Electronic submissions must be in PDF format and provide sufficient details for careful reviewing. The Best Poster Award will be offered based on both the content and the presentation of the poster, judged by an award committee. Certificates will be awarded to the first, second, and third place posters.

Electronic submissions must be in PDF format and provide sufficient details for careful reviewing. The Best Poster Award will be offered based on both the content and the presentation of the poster, judged by an award committee. Certificates will be awarded to the first, second, and third place posters.

The deadlines are:
Abstract submission: 14/09/2022
Acceptance notification: 19/09/2022 Digital poster submission: 27/09/2022

AGENDA:

• 9:00- Arrival coffee
• 9:30- Welcome note by IEEE UK & Ireland Chapter Chair: Professor Izzet Kale
• 9:45- Talk by Dr Yue Wang (Samsung) on career path and technical presentation of her work
• 10:10- Talk by Dr Yansha Deng from (KCL) on education path and career in research
• 10:40- Coffee break
• 11:00- Talk by Dr Joanne Chamberlain from (QMUL) about women’s role in interdisciplinary engineering projects
• 11:25- Talk by Ruth Brown (Heavy Reading – previously with BT Labs) about the recruitment of women in telecom
• 11:50- Talk by Joel Obstfeld (Cisco) about the ethics in telecom research
• 12:15- lunch
• 13:30- Panel to answer questions from moderator and audience
• 14:40- Coffee break
• 15:00- Poster session and networking
• 16:00- Panel to select best poster
• 16:30- Closing note and announcements

Mark Sandler is a Professor of Signal Processing in EECS. He agreed to talk to us about his experiences of many years of filling in Diversity Monitoring forms and in particular the Higher Education Statistics Agency diversity forms.

Mark is an Ashkenazi Jew and believes it is important for Jewish identities to be recognised on these forms. Describing filling the forms he says “It has always been awkward for me. The precise categories have evolved over the years and changed with our society but normally the form doesn’t even say ‘Jewish’ it just says ‘other’. Most recently I have been writing in ‘Ashkenazi Jew’ and this was a bit of a lightbulb moment as I’ve been filling in these things for forty years” Often he found himself simply ticking a box marked simply “other” (in some older forms he found himself ticking “Chinese and other”).

“I think it’s what David Baddiel captured in his book `Jews Don’t Count because in some sense we are invisible. It’s assumed we are assimilated enough that there is simply no need to take account of us separately. It makes me wonder `Why am I not included? Is there a default assumption I am a Christian? We often have a tendency to keep ourselves quiet and there are good reasons for that, history tells us to do so.”

“There is also an assumption that I’m simply a white man and don’t bring anything to a diversity committee,” Mark said. He discussed several things about Jewish lived experience that would perhaps be surprising to those who didn’t know about them for example. “Any synagogue you go past on a Saturday morning has community members patrolling outside wearing stab vests. On the continent they are often armed. Even Jewish schools and pre-schools have security guards and other protective measures.”

“People treat the outcome of these forms as if they are objective data but they really are not,” he explained. The omission of a Jewish identity on diversity forms worries him and not just in a university context, “Hospital forms often omit a Jewish identity even though there are genetic conditions like Tay-Sachs disease which affect Ashkenazi Jews.”