Home

What is the Athena SWAN Psychology National (ASPoN) Forum?

The ASPoN Forum is a national network for British Psychology departments who are engaged with the Athena Swan Charter and committed to to advancing the careers of women. It was launched on Monday 15th February 2016 at the 1st Athena SWAN Workshop for Psychology being held in Egham, London. Read our Terms of Reference.

News

7 Nov 2019

The Fourth Athena SWAN workshop for Psychology

Venue: UCL
Date: 7th November 2019
Time: 10-16:15
Open to Athena SWAN team members from Psychology
More Information and Sign-up with Eventbrite

The ASPoN Forum is a national network for British Psychology departments who are engaged with the Athena Swan Charter and committed to advancing the careers of women and addressing gender imbalances.

This will be our fourth meeting, following three successful workshops in Royal Holloway (2015), University College London (2016) and Queen’s University Belfast (2018). We are meeting at UCL again on Thursday, 7 November 2019.

The workshop will be held in Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, University College London. Attendance is free of charge and all are welcome, but advance registration is required. To register, please use the link on this page.

The aims of this workshop are to:

(i) Provide an up-to-date briefing to attendees on the Athena SWAN process by a representative from the Athena SWAN team at Advance HE, Tamara Szucs

(ii) Discuss relevant topics such as a) gender disparity in psychology b) career transition of women that can be used to inform the work of departmental SWAN SATs. If you would like to chair a discussion panel on a specific topic of interest, please contact Kriszta E. Szendroi k.szendroi@ucl.ac.ukwith a suggested title and brief abstract by 21 October 2019. We will notify selected chairs by 28 October.

(iii) Provide a dissemination opportunity for department representatives to brief workshop attendees on any initiatives they have been conducting within their own departments. If you would like to give a 5-10 minute presentation at the workshop in which you describe some work being done within your department, please contact Kriszta E. Szendroi k.szendroi@ucl.ac.uk.

Programme

10.05-10:15 Opening remarks

10:15-11:00 Ioana Latu (Queen's U. Belfast): The Psychology of Gender in Understanding Gender Equality Initiatives

11-11:30 coffee

11.30-12.30 Tamara Szucs (Athena SWAN Programme Adviser): Preparing an Athena SWAN application

12:30-1.15 Lunch

1.15-2.30 Panel discussions, Small group discussion, Q & A session with Tamara Szucs

2.30-3.00 Feedback from panel discussions, general discussion

3.00-3:30 coffee

3:30-4.00 Short presentations from any departments about their initiatives

4.00-4.15 Wrap up

30th June 2016

Congratulations to all those receiving their Athena SWAN awards today

April 2016

Congratulations to the following departments who were successful in the recent round of Athena SWAN awards
Bronze
Bangor University School of Psychology
Birkbeck College Department of Psychological Sciences
Bronze Renewal
Sheffield Hallam Psychology Group
University of Reading School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences
Silver
University of Exeter Psychology
Silver Renewal
University of York Department of Psychology

February 2016

Workshop: see our events page for more information

4th Meeting of ASPON Forum

7 November 2019, University College London

We held our fourth ASPON Forum meeting on 7 November 2019 at University College London. The workshop took place at Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, University College London from 10am to 4pm.

The aims of this workshop were to (i) Provide an up-to-date briefing to attendees on the Athena SWAN process by a representative from the Athena SWAN team at Advance HE, Tamara Szucs; (ii) Discuss relevant topics such as a) gender disparity in psychology b) career transition of women that can be used to inform the work of departmental SWAN SATs; (iii) Provide a dissemination opportunity for department representatives to brief workshop attendees on any initiatives they have been conducting within their own departments.

About 25 psychology SWAN coordinators attended the workshop from all over the country.

Our day started with an excellent research presentation on the science of gender bias by Dr Iana Natu (Queen's University Belfast) entitled The Psychology of Gender in Understanding Gender Equality Initiatives

An extremely useful presentation and Q&A session followed, by Tamara Szucs, Athena SWAN Programme Adviser: ATHENA Swan: Preparing a (successful) application

We ended our day with a discussion about mentoring through the different career stages, led by Dan Mirman, (Edinburgh). Participants had ample opportunity to share best practices on this and related issues.

Feedback from our attendees
66% of the attendees filled in a feedback form
100% of them agreed or strongly agreed that they found the 2019 ASPON Day useful
93% agreed or strongly agreed that the topics discussed were relevant
86% agreed or strongly agreed that the talk on the science of gender bias was interesting
100% agreed or strongly agreed that the presentation by the ATHENA SWAN representative was useful
100% agreed or strongly agreed that the small group discussion/ Q&A session was useful
and 100% felt that they had enough opportunity to discuss equality-related issues informally among ourselves

'Good to hear initiatives/ ideas from other departments'

'Useful to have a network from my discipline to discuss Ahena SWAN with and I value the website and distribution list as resources I can use so any further development regarding that would be wonderful.'

'All truly excellent - very, very helpful'

'AMAZING'

'I really enjoyed the day & found it very informative'

'Great to meet fellow psychologists and great as networking opportunity. Very useul application tips. It was a little frustrating that certain aspects or examples from the AS application couldn't be talked about but the peer support made up for this.'

'The talks in the morning were amazing. Because the workshop was long it may be beneficial to have a third speaker in the afternoon. The Q&A was useful but long and sometimes the discussion was more nuanced than needed.'

'I found the Q&A session particularly useful. The Q&A helped elucidate several questions; the opinion of academics from the other universities; Thank you for the wonderful event!'

'Extremely useful & informative day. Lots of food for thought?'