Professor Nicky Padfield appointed Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity

The Faculty is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Nicky Padfield as the Faculty’s inaugural Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity (EDI).

This new role has been created following the Faculty’s receipt, earlier this year, of an Athena SWAN Bronze Award, which recognised the Faculty’s commitment to addressing matters of gender equality. In preparing its Athena SWAN application and associated action plan, the Faculty undertook a process that involved considerable engagement — with students, academic staff and professional services staff — and self-reflection. That process underlined the need for equality, diversity and inclusivity-related matters to be fully embedded within the Faculty’s governance and decision-making processes. The establishment of the post of Director of EDI is key to the achievement of that objective — and while the creation of the post emerged from a process that was primarily concerned with gender equality, the remit of the role has been framed with reference to equality in its myriad forms and on all relevant grounds.

Professor Padfield has worked in the University of Cambridge for 30 years, serving for six years as Master of Fitzwilliam College. She has also been a Tutor, an Admissions Tutor and a part-time judge. Her research has long been concerned with throwing light on disadvantages and injustice within the criminal justice system.

Welcoming Professor Padfield’s appointment, Professor Mark Elliott, Chair of the Faculty of Law, commented:

"This appointment underlines our commitment to ensuring that the Faculty of Law is a welcoming and inclusive environment for all students and colleagues, and builds on the Faculty’s access and widening participation work that seeks to ensure that our student body fully reflects the diversity of our society. I look forward very much to working with Professor Padfield as she begins in this new role."

Nicky Padfield commented:

I shall bend over backwards to work with staff and students to help ensure that the values of equality, diversity and inclusivity are advanced in ways that really make a difference.Nicky Padfield

"I am pleased to take on this role in the Faculty. I know it will be a challenge: although the University and the Faculty have made significant progress in recent years in this area, there is also a great deal of work that remains to be done. I shall bend over backwards to work with staff and students to help ensure that the values of equality, diversity and inclusivity are advanced in ways that really make a difference."

Professor Padfield formally takes up her role as Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity on 1 October 2020.