This is a B-HUGs-EMBRACE Enviro Collaboration in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society and Migrant Help UK

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Context and Challenge

Belonging is a core human need and fundamental determinant of educational experience, career trajectory and social integration for marginalised groups. In England, Black representation in NERC-facing subjects declines sharply from GCSE to A-level and undergraduate stages,reaching close to 0% in some NERC disciplines. This pattern continues into employment: in 2022 only ~4.8% of those in NERC-related employment roles identified as Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic, compared with 12.6% across other sectors. Against entrenched anti-Black praxes in UK education manifested as tracking bias, inflated exclusion rates and persistent inequities in degree awards, lack of representation fundamentally erodes belonging. Interventions explicitly cultivating belonging are both urgent and effective for improving retention and progression and, when cultivated at scale, for reshaping norms, networks, institutional cultures and policy trajectories.

Meeting the Challenge: Approach, Aims and Objectives

Our theory of change centres connecting representation across the education and employment pipeline through coordinated interventions that operate at individual, institutional and policy levels. We will create spaces that normalise Black presence, leadership and expertise in environment sciences and use participatory and Afronographic (learning as people of African descent) methods to cultivate agency and translate lived experience into systems change. This “pipeline of belonging” will be leveraged to meet our aims of transforming individual trajectories and driving institutional and policy reform.

Our specific objectives are to:

1. Increase belonging in NERC science and promote subject retention for Black pupils and students with a diversity of migration histories

2. Foster critical conversation to support i. action development by Black young people with a diversity of migration histories and their parents/guardians and ii. our understanding of barriers to participation and progression

3. Support pipeline access, progression and belonging for Black migrants,asylum seekers and refugees aged 18+

4. Curate a resilient, well-connected landscape of belonging for Black individuals with a diversity of migration histories in the NERC community

5. Develop and advocate evidence-based policy and practice for schools,organizations and local and national government entities.

Project timeline

July 2026-December 2028

Key Project Links

Learn more: EMBRACE Enviro – Project Skills Training Program – Project participant blog (coming soon) – Royal Geographical Society – Migrant Help UK

Core Project Team and Institutions

• Row 1: Dr Safi Darden, Dr Melody Kuziwa Jombe, Wahida Sussex, Dr Eunice Oppon
• Row 2: Prof Olalekan Adekola, Dr Tokunbo Olorundami, Dr Pauline Couper, Prof Divine Charura
• Row 3: Jasmine Roberts, Sam Reid, Prof Gang Pan, Prof Robert Mortimer

Project funder

The project is funded by UKRI Natural Environment Research Council as one of six projects in their Opening up the Environment 2026 Funding Scheme.