Diverse Voices 2024/25: Reflections From Our Final Session

This July saw us hold our final workshop and closing session for the Diverse Voices 2024/25 cohort. Diverse Voices is the PSA’s flagship initiative that supports historically marginalised scholars of Politics and International Relations based in a UK university, for an academic year. For this cohort, the PSA welcomed nine PhD students to the programme from different institutions within the UK, offering a wide array of support including mentoring, networking, and one year’s complimentary PSA membership. Some of the scholars also received small research grants and one-to-one mentoring from the programme leads.

Why do we support diverse PhD students?

Findings from recent studies by the Academy of Social Science (2024) and the British Academy (2025) show that there continues to be a significant ethnic gap within our discipline. According to the British Academy report, in 2022/23, only 23% of UK-domiciled PhD students in Politics and IR were from a minoritised group (p.47). These disparities are more pronounced at staff levels, with 7% of minoritised groups at professorial levels and 13% at other contract levels. As part of its commitment to advocate for a more diverse and inclusive discipline, the PSA through its Diverse Voices programme offers tailored support to PhD students from underrepresented groups to enable them to thrive.

Our final workshop sought to provide guidance on various career pathways available to PhD students. We had five insightful sessions delivered by Dr Caroline Leicht, Dr Aleida Borges, Dr Heather Alberro, Prof. Cathy Elliott and Dr Omar Khan. Each of the sessions were rich, engaging and impactful. Caroline kicked off the workshop with a ‘Life after PhD’ session, where she shared her experiences, challenges, wins and general tips for navigating the hurdles of post-PhD.

Next was a session on pursuing career in academia, where Aleida, Heather and Cathy unpacked the essentials of a pathway in postdoc, research, lectureship (education and research), and lectureship (education) tracks. The final session was delivered by Omar, where he talked through non-academic opportunities for PhD students, especially in think-tanks, policy institutes and government bodies. All the sessions were profoundly impactful and included additional tips on job searches and interview preparation.

This is what the scholars told us about these sessions:

“Hearing the experiences and having the opportunity to ask questions to recent PhD graduates. I really liked having deep insights in academic and non-academic careers and having someone from Runnymede talk was great as it’s a think tank that I’ve considered working for.”

“The speakers were knowledgeable and provided informative responses to questions on topics we were uncertain about. There was also a wealth of information that I had not previously considered regarding future options.”

After a full day of intense sessions (and a full academic year of various academic activities) we thought it would be great to end the programme with a networking and drinks event. The scholars were joined by some of our founding fellows, and got a chance to discuss their research and future plans. For some, this session may just have been the highlight of their day!

“The networking at the end where I got to meet different scholars whose work I had read.”

We sincerely thank this year’s Diverse Voices leads, Dr Roula Nezi, Dr Aleida Borges and Dr Heather Alberro, for their time and efforts in making the second cohort of Diverse Voices such a success. We are also grateful to our speakers and founding fellows for their support in making the final workshop and closing session both deeply insightful and memorable. We wish all nine scholars the very best in all their endeavours and look forward to seeing them thrive as members of the PSA community.

If you would like to support the PSA Diverse Voices initiative, please visit our page here.

Joan McDappa, PSA Diversity and Projects Officer