LINC

LGBTQ+ Inclusivity in Cardiff research, a creative arts collaboration between internal and external LGBTQ+ communities.

LGBTQ+ communities are under-represented as participants in research. These groups face specific characteristic barriers as well as broader, intersectional challenges that are more common across these communities.

Funded by the Research Culture Fund, LINC sought to bring together Cardiff-based researchers with individuals from outside the academic bubble. They shared experiences of exclusion in research and created impactful outputs to encourage change in our research practice.

Our goal – using creative methods – was to highlight these barriers, in direct discussion with researchers, and to generate material to encourage University policy or practice change across the research environment.

Overview

Through our workshop, we opened up the conversation about experiences working with researchers, both at Cardiff University and further afield. Our participants responded through dialogue, through written forms, and through artistic responses. Scribes captured themes of table discussions, while the artistic responses were collated into an online flip-book. We also produced a video, which condensed a few key messages with support from one of the external contributors – providing a variety of engagement tools to take our recommendations back into the research community.

Themes captured

Through our engagement, we were able to draw out a few themes that were important to our LGBTQ+ contributors:

1. Under-representation in the research workforce is a barrier to good inclusivity
2. Standardisation – particularly around sex and gender – leaves little room for the full range of experiences and identities
3. More varied research methods would support better inclusivity
4. Co-design is a key part of improving practice
5. Transparency around funding sources, intents, and outputs is vital to LGBTQ+ individuals (for direct and indirect reasons)
6. Projects like LINC should not deflect from wider systems change to reach those less engaged in EDI and inclusivity practice

Recommendations

From these themes – and with feedback from the contributors – the LINC group produced a series of short-, mid-, and long-term recommendations for researchers looking to improve LGBTQ+ inclusivity:

Short term

1. Modify forms to allow for gender/sexuality self-declaration.
2. Redesign templated participant materials to use more accessible language.
3. Develop simplified outputs from research, with these circulated to participants and communities studied after the project end.
4. Prominently promote funding sources and intent behind research projects involving LGBTQ+ participants.

Mid term

1. Researchers should develop deeper connections with the communities they are working before-and-after projects with.
2. Encourage representation by embedding public involvement in research development, including co-design methods with LGBTQ+ representation.
3. Consider more diverse data collection methods, such as free-text or artistic responses to enable broader and more inclusive inputs.
4. Encourage research leaders to take part in training or engagement with LGBTQ+ communities and broaden their understanding of “known unknowns”.
5. Address stigmatising attitudes or beliefs that are barriers to participation.

Long term

1. Support LGBTQ+ participants to become research partners in their own right as collaborators on research design.
2. Diversify the research workforce to uplift LGBTQ+ researchers into positions of research leadership.