Protecting minoritised EDI research staff wellbeing:
Protecting minoritised EDI research staff
wellbeing: Actions for principal investigators, senior leaders and funders
Key messages
Minoritised research staff working in EDI are exhausted, disillusioned and disempowered as a direct result of how their work is tied to their minoritised identities and past traumas.
Executive summary
Minoritised research staff working in EDI report heightened levels of exhaustion, disillusionment and disempowerment as a direct result of their roles and how entangled their identities are in the work that they do.
Principal investigators should design research projects with multiple identities in mind and prioritise upskilling opportunities that do not centre on minoritised research staff’s marginalised backgrounds.
Funding bodies and Senior leaders should mandate the integration of support systems within EDI research structures.
Research evidence showed we need
Practical guidance on how equitable principles should be applied in day-to-day research practice.
Safeguards in cases when equity is deprioritised as the projects progress.
The lack of specificity, accountability, and safeguarding leaves minoritised EDI research staff vulnerable to systemic inequities that harm their wellbeing and professional progression. The evidence demonstrates that the resulting exhaustion, burnout, and turnover impose high costs on institutions including recruitment and retraining expenses, lost productivity, and damage to institutional culture and morale.
To mitigate these impacts, principal investigators, funding bodies and senior HE leaders must strengthen protections to address the psychological strain and identity-related pressures experienced by minoritised EDI research staff. This policy brief seeks to outline protections needed to support these staff members’ wellbeing.
Researcher voices
“The turnover in EDI roles is incredibly high. We’re working against a rigged system without the power, resources or autonomy to change it, yet we’re still told to make a difference. And it’s hard not to ask, what difference?
“If people, though, could actually see, what you go through, what you deal with, what you’re battling, you would have medals. Do you know what I mean? Because the amount of work you have to do, personal work, individual work, work with others, tolerating people. If people were to actually see what every interaction does, and the energy associated with it, they’d be superwoman. She’s superwoman, right?
There’s a constant, hidden emotional labour in this work. I’m always weighing what I can say, what I should leave out, and which parts of myself feel safe to bring into the room. That cognitive burden follows me through meetings, conversations and decisions.
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Sometimes this work feels like a modern version of empire. Black and Brown people on the front line, doing the heavy lifting and they are culpable. But it’s the seniors who get the credit while protected from blame. When celebrating victories, white staff are put at the front.
I have to find ways to move in those spaces to be seen. Because when people can relate to you, they’re more likely to listen to you, they’re more likely to see your perspective right? So I have to sometimes mirror the whiteness in the room in order to be heard.
Policy recommendations Principal investigators (PIs)
PIs need to move away from a tokenistic approach and engage meaningfully with intersectionality.
Why it’s important
Project design, delivery and impact should move beyond the single-identity approach towards prioritising the lived experience of minoritised research staff, particularly in relation to intersectionality. Intersectionality involves an awareness of the complexity of the lived experience of those with multiple marginalised identities (e.g. being an ethnic minority, having a disability, and belonging to the LGBTQ+ community). Ignoring intersectionality serves to increase the marginalisation of minoritised research staff with intersectional identities. They describe the single-identity focus as traumatic, and report feeling invisible, ignored, and coerced into deciding which identity to pioneer and which to ignore - essentially fragmenting their sense of self.
What should be done
Principal investigators need to recognise that marginalised individuals are not single identities and therefore:
Embed intersectionality into project design, development and implementation.
Engage collaboratively with the lived experience of minoritised research staff with intersecting identities.
PIs need to prioritise upskilling opportunities that do not centre on minoritised research staff’s marginalised backgrounds.
Why it’s important
The upskilling of minoritised research staff should be prioritised within EDI research teams. Currently, minoritised research staff report that principal investigators tend to use their identities as ‘currency’, positioning them as ‘diversity mascots’, which subsequently attracts numerous requests for advice and support from others with similar minoritised backgrounds. They describe the isolating and emotionally draining invisible mental load associated with both the pressure to provide unrestricted access to their lived experiences, and the inability to switch off from what they describe as ‘permanent advocacy’.
What should be done
Principal investigators need to:
Avoid reducing minoritised research staff to their backgrounds, and instead provide development opportunities that span the full range of their skills.
Ensure that all ‘hidden labour’ performed by minoritised research staff (e.g. all unofficial advocacy work) receives appropriate recognition within the team.
Funding bodies and Senior leaders should mandate the integration of a support system into EDI research structures.
Why it’s important
Mandatory support systems should be integrated into EDI structures to promote the wellbeing of minoritised research staff who experience psychological strain as a result of the challenges inherent in their roles. These include:
Being positioned as token spokespersons for their marginalised groups which places minoritised research staff under the complex burden of representing others who are already underrepresented, creating intense pressure to perform flawlessly.
Poor resourcing, unfair workload distributions associated with the hidden knowledge exchange inherent in EDI work, and an unrealistic understanding of the time and energy required to successfully perform innately complex and challenging EDI work - which leads to intense levels of exhaustion.
The professional precarity within EDI that is compounded by the perception that those who raise equity concerns are ‘problematic’, and the intense competition that exists among the different marginalised communities forces staff to navigate an ongoing tension between advocacy and self-preservation.
The personal relevance of the negative experiences staff encounter, combined with inadequate wellbeing support that fails to meet these needs, and lack of progress in embedding improvements into existing practice often results in a reliance on unhealthy coping strategies.
What should be done
Funding bodies should revise funding application requirements to ensure that PIs clearly demonstrate:
How and why teams were composed, including plans to support the professional development and wellbeing of minoritised team members.
Detailed strategies for embedding EDI research outputs into existing institutional structures and frameworks, with regular progress updates required throughout the funding period.
Senior leaders should:
Update institutional promotion criteria to formally recognise unofficial EDI labour, including advocacy, mentoring, and community engagement; and provide clear, timely pathways to senior roles comparable to other specialisations.
Revise workload allocation models at Department and Faculty levels to account for the hidden aspects of EDI work, such as advocacy, and ensure this labour is appropriately valued.
Ensure access to culturally competent wellbeing support for minoritised research staff working in the EDI field, either through partnerships with independent providers or equivalent in-house provision.
Adopt institution-wide EDI strategies that address multiple minoritised identities collectively, reducing existing levels of competition between identity groups and promoting collaboration across the EDI research space.
