Dawn Edge is our Phenomenal Woman
29 Oct 2020
Professor of Mental Health and Inclusivity features in Southbank Centre exhibition celebrating Britain's Black female professors
Our Professor of Mental Health and Inclusivity, Dawn Edge features in a Southbank Centre exhibition celebrating Britain's Black female professors.
Phenomenal Women: Portraits of UK Black Female Professors, commissioned and curated by Dr Nicola Rollock and photographed by Bill Knight, features portraits of 45 professors across a broad range of subjects including law, medicine, creative writing and sociology.
The free, unique, outdoor exhibition, along the Southbank Centre’s very popular public riverside promenade The Queen’s Walk, runs from 10 October to 8 November and is timed to coincide with Black History Month.
Professor Edge said: “As The University of Manchester’s first and currently only Black woman Professor, I’m especially honoured to be featured in this excellent exhibition.
“I wanted to take part because I want my role to inspire greater diversity in academia in general and at Russell Group universities in particular as there are just a handful of of us at the moment and that really needs to change.”
The exhibition results from research by Dr Rollock that showed the barriers faced by Black women as they worked to navigate their way through higher education and the strategies they used to help them reach professorship.
According to the Guardian among 21,000 academic staff at professorial level, only 140 identify as black. But according to Dr Rollock’s research, in 2019 there were just 25 Black women professors - or just 0.12% of the total.