The pressing need for allyship

Inclusivity – what do you take that term to mean, and how do you think it should be applied in an academic science context?

To me inclusivity is an active, ongoing process that ensures everyone has the opportunity and appropriate support to facilitate full and meaningful participation.

Within academic science this means working to recognise and remove barriers which marginalise people. There have been many great initiatives at different levels from ensuring representation in public engagement to inspire young people to recognise themselves as potential scientists, through to programmes like the Women of Influence programme supporting women as they transition to leadership positions, but more is needed.

While the moral argument is sufficient to justify this, there is also a more pragmatic purpose to broadening participation in academic science. It’s only relatively recently that it has become more appreciated how many gaps exist in our knowledge because research has been conducted through a very specific lens; exclusion of women from clinical trials, the failure to consider the effects of race and racism, and the lack of awareness of different ability have all led to wider healthcare inequality.

There are still many issues needing to be addressed though, a recent paper by 5 senior women scientists highlighted many challenges still facing women in science including high rates of sexual harassment, microaggressions and patronisation. As such there remains a pressing need for allyship at all levels.

Tell us about the Betty Macgregor Memorial Award showcase

At the CRUK Scotland Institute we have started an annual memorial showcase named after Betty Macgregor who was a pioneer in the field of cervical cancer screening. Her work focused on taking, processing and interpreting cervical smears but critically also concerned how to translate this into the field leading to the first cervical cancer screening programme in Scotland.

This work saved countless women’s lives and acted as a template for countries as far afield as Australia and New Zealand. With the current success of the HPV vaccine and the near eradication of cervical cancer it seemed an ideal time to name an award to remember her accomplishments. As part of the showcase members of the institute invite and present an award to a woman who has made a disproportionate impact in cancer research.

We also invite a woman at an earlier stage of her career to present to highlight ongoing work. In 2023 the first award was given to Professor Margaret Stanley O.B.E for her work on HPV. Her talk as well as her candid discussions with trainees were inspirational for many in the institute with people still reflecting how much the day meant for them. We have another excellent recipient planned for 2024 and look forward to this continuing.

What motivated you to set that up?

I am fortunate enough to have a brilliant colleague in the school of infection and immunity at the University of Glasgow, Megan MacLeod who set up a similar showcase for women in immunology. When I joined the CRUK SI I joined the committee organising this event and saw how inspiring students and postdocs in my lab found the event. In fact, the showcase was one of the highlights of the year for many trainees across the University immunology community.

Once we started having a more normal schedule of events following return to work from lock-down I thought it would be a great opportunity to adapt the event for cancer sciences. Megan was hugely generous in providing guidance and advice to help us to refashion the event for our institute and our first year was a huge success.

This demonstrates your incredible allyship for women scientists – why is it you see this as an important part of research culture, and what can others do to champion groups that might benefit from it?

I think that this event is a good start and moves us in the right direction but also believe that I and the wider institute can do more.

I think that it is important that our bar for allyship is raised as this type of activity should not be considered an incredible act; furthermore while larger events and initiatives are important to change things at an institutional level it is arguably more important to engage in everyday allyship.

I’m not an expert, nor do I believe I have the answers, but I think that those of us who are provided with a platform need to ensure we create space for everyone to speak and to make sure that we listen especially when it is uncomfortable. In this way we can start to make research more inclusive by helping remove barriers or to promote initiatives which we may previously have not even been aware of.

Ultimately, it sounds like a cliché, but however you want to be an ally I believe needs to start with actively listening and building coalitions. Then we need to remember that any initiative is like any other experiment we run, we need to monitor the outcomes to check we are achieving the desired effects and, even more critically, to ensure we aren’t causing any unintended issues. If we don’t do this, it is easy to pat ourselves on the back for doing something nice but which is ultimately not achieving much.

I guess the end game for actions like allyship, is that they’ll no longer be needed – do you foresee a time where inclusivity will be the norm?

I hope that there will be a time when inclusivity is the norm but this will never be a passive state and will require continued allyship. New frontiers of inclusion will open up and we may find ourselves out of step. There may be times when the needs of different groups may come into conflict and solutions need to be found that allow for everyone’s inclusion.

We are fortunate that working in science we have the privilege of constantly working with enthusiastic, intelligent young people who have concerns relevant to the current day. We are also in an environment where we all learn together and gain understanding from each other, if we can focus that on pushing for inclusion than I think we will make great strides.

Tell us a bit about your own research journey so far, and what your lab is interested in now

I started my PhD in 2007 working on cancer associated fibroblasts and their impact on cancer immunology.

In that lab I was nervous about the impact my queer identity would have on my career and spent a few years keeping that side of my life private. I was fortunate to gain an incredible ally in a new postdoctoral research fellow, Alice Denton, who drew me out of that and helped me fully engage with the lab.

Ultimately this led to some work surrounding cachexia in cancer before I moved to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California San Francisco where I started my work on dendritic cells. I set up my lab in 2019 investigating how the tumour influences the priming microenvironment in the lymph node. We are particularly interested in how the tissue microenvironment influences the phenotype of dendritic cells and how this is translated into the organisation of the node and the subsequent phenotype of the T cell response.

Ultimately, we hope to identify potential targets to improve T cell priming in the lymph node to synergise with therapies targeting the tumour microenvironment.