One of the UK university sector’s few black leaders is hoping to build a better pipeline of ethnic minority academic staff, via almost two dozen new PhD studentships.
The 23 fully funded studentships at Birmingham City University would offer aspiring researchers a tax-free doctoral stipend for up to 42 months, plus a full fee waiver, said vice-chancellor David Mba.
While a majority of BCU’s students come from ethnic minority backgrounds, that diversity is not represented in the staffing body that Professor Mba inherited when he joined the institution last October.
“The idea is that we transition [students] from PhDs into teaching fellows and ultimately onto the teaching body,” he told Times Higher Education.
