Enhancing EDI in application processes: Evaluating an anonymisation-deanonymisation review process

The CES Transformation Fund is a grant scheme run by Rachel Kendal and team, on behalf of the Cultural Evolution Society (CES) thanks to the generosity of the John Templeton Foundation (Grant #61913: Transforming the field of cultural evolution and its application to global human futures).

The vision for the grant scheme was to boost, strengthen and extend scientific discoveries of cultural evolution. To achieve this the funding scheme explicitly aimed to encourage diversity through tackling (i) early career obstacles, (ii) western centrism, (iii) traditional disciplinary divides, and (iv) division of academics and policy makers.

These aims were embedded in the design of our application and review process which contained many measures to enhance equity diversity and inclusion (EDI) both in selecting who was funded and in the research conducted by our awardees.

This talk will provide an overview of the EDI measures we employed, including sequential anonymized-deanonymized review, a 2-stage application process incorporating mentoring, a diversity scoring system, an ‘ethics box’, and diverse review panels (see blog summary). The success of these measures in achieving our EDI objectives will be outlined as well as the practicalities of employing these measures. Survey responses from applicants and reviewers regarding the measures will also be discussed.

About the Speaker

Prof Rachel Kendal received her PhD in Zoology from the University of Cambridge (UK) and has been based in the Anthropology Department at Durham University (UK) for most of her academic career. She developed an interest in EDI in funding through roles involving running funding competitions as (i) Director of Postgraduate Admissions for her department, (ii) founder of the Research Working Party for the Primate Society of Great Britian, and (iii) President of the Cultural Evolution Society when she applied for funding to run the CES Transformation Fund with scientific rigour and equity at its core.

Recorded on 18 December 2024

This talk was part of our AFIRE Funders’ Forum Event series, a series of talks and discussions for funders interested in formal experiments and evaluations of innovations in the research and innovation funding system, part of RoRI’s AFIRE programme: an Accelerator For Innovation & Research Funding Experimentation.