The LEAPS task force, established in October 2020, has presented a statement on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Anti-discrimination as the first step of its activities and is currently filling it with life.
All LEAPS facilities have best practice examples to address the topics of the task force, to strengthen diversity, ensure equity and provide an environment free from discrimination. These activities will be collected and presented in a comprehensive summary and augmented with new ideas. The query of activities and ideas is ongoing, while the intermediate status already shows the multifarious approaches and measures. The next aim is to provide this extensive and growing collection to all LEAPS facilities.
The task force consists of the following persons:
Marek Stankiewicz, Solaris; Ana Anselmo, HZB; Barbara Schramm, HZDR; Cecilia Blasetti, Elettra; Franz Hennies, MAX IV; Deike Pahl, XFEL; Antje Vollmer, HZB
LEAPS Statement on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Anti-discrimination (IDEA)
The League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources (LEAPS) brings together Synchrotron Radiation and Free Electron Laser user facilities in Europe in a strategic consortium that aims to actively and constructively ensure and promote the quality and impact of fundamental, applied and industrial research for the benefit of European science and society.
As international large-scale research infrastructures where interdisciplinary scientific topics are explored, LEAPS facilities are inherently diverse and dynamic. They are science hubs for communities that share a common goal in pursuing scientific advancements but also bring with them different personal cultural backgrounds. LEAPS provides an organizational structure that gives all scientists the opportunity to flourish and explore their abilities and interests in an inclusive environment.
As a European consortium focusing on scientific excellence, LEAPS is committed to strengthening diversity and is acutely aware of owing its success to the talents, ideas, cooperation, and collective and complementary collaboration of its scientists. The ingredients to this success are respect and fairness, appreciation and openness. Ensuring equity and achieving an inclusive environment, free from discrimination at all levels, is LEAPS’s responsibility.
The prerequisite to scientific and societal prosperity is the creation of an atmosphere of acceptance and trust, embracing all differences stemming from personal ways of life or personal living situations, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, ideologies, biographies, religion, beliefs, disability, age, appearance, and many other aspects. In an increasingly globalised and interdependent world, cohesion matters, diversity helps, and impartiality is indispensable.
LEAPS recognizes that scientific communities, as all communities, are built by individuals informed by their own experience, circumstances, unconscious biases and greater society.
In order to achieve the goals of inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-discrimination, it is our commitment to provide a range of specific tools, tailored to each of the LEAPS facilities, making them the ideal location for large international, interdisciplinary and intermixed teams to thrive and achieve their highest potential.