Then and now: celebrating culture and community at Imperial

As part of the Shifting the Lens exhibition, we caught up with some of the participants who had taken part over the years to find out where they are now, their reflections on their original interview and their hopes for the future.

Shifting the Lens is a campaign celebrating staff and students from minority ethnic backgrounds. It was created by a project team on the IMPACT talent development programme for minority ethnic staff: Grace Adeyemi, Christopher Bamikole, Aleisha Miller and Martha Salhotra. The first profiles were published in 2020.

What are you up to now?

Sohag Saleh, Principal Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Medicine

During the pandemic my role changed quite a lot, leaning more towards the digital provision of education. I’m now quite staff-focused, supporting colleagues to deliver teaching. Professionally it’s been a big transition. I’m also quite heavily involved in Imperial’s bid to launch a medical school in Cumbria, which has been really interesting.

Syed Shah, Research Finance Manager, Imperial College Business School

Professionally, I am excited to be joining the OPUS Programme, which is a major change programme to transform the effectiveness and efficiency of Imperial's professional services. It’s a great opportunity to have a lasting impact on Imperial’s processes in key areas. There have been a few big changes on the personal front as well. We moved home to outside of London. We also had an addition to the family – we had a baby boy last year – and I lost my father at the beginning of the year.

Alicia Gayle, alumnus, National Heart and Lung Institute

Since 2020, I’ve graduated from Imperial and I've changed jobs. I'm now working for an Italian pharmaceutical company as an epidemiologist – so I've stayed in the same field as my PhD. I've also picked up a part-time lecturing position at the University of East London on their Master’s programme in public health, supervising some dissertation projects and helping out with marking.

At my Imperial graduation, seeing the other students graduating and the names on the programme, it was absolutely 100% clear that diversity was there.

Harbhajan Brar, Director of Human Resources

I’ve been involved in a lot of work around addressing bullying and harassment with the support of my team, in terms of raising the profile of tools such as Report and Support, including being much more transparent with our ER data around employee relations cases.

I’ve also been part of the history project which is about recognising and trying to raise the profile of individuals we haven't done enough with and for. There’s been some positive progress, for example the naming of the Abdus Salam Library, and more actions to come soon.

Ata Rahman, Communications Officer, ICT

I have changed jobs, I am now a Communications Officer in ICT. I’ve got to work with a wider range of people throughout Imperial which I think has helped develop more insights into some of the challenges being faced by minority ethnic people and other minoritised communities.

I am still teaching in my spare time, running the English language school for asylum seekers and refugees, which has been fantastic. Our student numbers are continuing to grow.

Sohag Saleh

Syed Shah

Alicia Gayle

Harbhajan Brar

Ata Rahman

Harbhajan Brar

Sohag Saleh

Alicia Gayle

Syed Shah

Ata Rahman

Is there anything you spoke about in the campaign that you feel differently about now?

Harbhajan: For me the key is to be your authentic self, and I was for my interview. My thinking and approach hasn’t changed.

Sohag: Up in Cumbria, I go to a lot of meetings with partners and stakeholders, and there are far fewer minority ethnic people. It’s not something I’m particularly conscious of, or bothered by, but in the past it’s something that would have intimidated me. It just makes me realise how diverse the community at Imperial is.

Alicia: Looking back at my original profile, I don’t disagree with what I said in 2020, but I'd probably say it differently now. I have different perceptions after graduating and leaving Imperial, and some of the things I spoke about then would not be the first things I'd want to talk about now. I wouldn’t talk so much about my hair for example. Things are actually very much improving and hair is not so much a big deal anymore. A lot of people wear their hair naturally. It's not as taboo as it perhaps was.

Syed: My outlook really is that I like to focus on the similarities rather than the differences between people. That outlook hasn't changed, so I’m still pretty positive.

I think Imperial has been ahead of the game in terms of wider society, with initiatives like the availability of different dietary options – like halal food is readily available. I've got access to prayer rooms and different events are celebrated. I think I might have mentioned this in the last interview, walking past the big screen in the main entrance, which says Eid Mubarak to all colleagues, that gives you a warm feeling inside.

Ata: A lot of my interview last time focused on how perceptions were felt within the community, and I think I have a better way of describing it now. I would stress the dichotomy between being an ethnic minority and being gay, particularly within the South Asian Muslim community. Throughout my 20s and even up until today to a certain extent, I have always felt that I was one too much for the other – too gay to be brown and too brown to be gay. While I think that more strides have been made in the LGBT community around race, although there is still a long way to go, I think the South Asian community, particularly the Muslim South Asian community, unfortunately, still has quite a lot of homophobia, even in generations below the age of forty.

What are your hopes for the future?

Alicia: My hopes for the future are really about academia as a field rather than diversity specifically. I saw the struggles that postdocs and fellows in my research group went through in terms of short-term contracts and lack of funding. In the future I hope the field improves and more people have the option to stay in academia beyond a PhD, and Imperial draws people in to stay within the university.

Sohag: I have a lot of hopes for the future in this space, where platforms like Shifting the Lens can really help. I would hope that campaigns like this change some people’s views about certain marginalised groups. Even in universities and academia, which I think are very liberal, there are people who find it difficult to talk about gender and sexuality. So my hope is that people will become even more accepting.

Syed: I suppose having that diversity reflected in more senior leadership would be nice. Since I took part in Shifting the Lens, we’ve got Harbhajan now as the Director of HR, which is a very positive development and sends out the right signals to staff across the organisation. I think I used the phrase the glass ceiling last time and I think Harbhajan broke that, but I still think that’s just one non-white face I see in senior management. It would be nice to see a few more.

Ata: I don't think that our vision for diversity and the future of diversity at Imperial is explicit enough yet. I want to see more representation from all minoritised communities in senior leadership and more voices from minoritised communities, from all levels of staff and students.

Decision making needs to come from absolutely every voice and if things aren’t moving in the right direction, we need to be able to hold people accountable for that, look at why, and do something about it. We need to stop fearing saying that we're not getting it right.

Harbhajan: We are making progress, but it’s slow. We do need to change the demographics of the organisation – we need more women, minority ethnic and disabled staff in senior roles. We also need to improve visibility of our disabled communities.

We have an opportunity with Imperial’s new strategy to embed diversity into our plans for the next 20-30 years and make commitments. My hopes for the future are that there will come a time when we don’t even need to think about equality, diversity and inclusion, because it will just be there, and we won’t need these sorts of initiatives.

Alicia Gayle

Sohag Saleh

Syed Shah

Ata Rahman

Harbhajan Brar

Visit the Shifting the Lens exhibition in the Main Entrance of South Kensington Campus from Wednesday 1 November until Wednesday 8 November and discover the stories of staff and students who have taken part in Shifting the Lens over the last few years.

Open to all, visitors will be able to share their own story by sending in photos and comments as part of the exhibition.

Find out more about our Shifting the Lens series.

If you have any questions about the series please email the Internal Communications Team.