Hello, readers! As we wave goodbye to 2023, let’s take a moment to reflect on the incredible year that we’ve had at Women in Neuroscience UK (WiNUK). From engaging events, to insightful social media posts, enlightening blogs and informative newsletters, it’s been a year of growth, learning, and connection. Here are some of our highlights:
Growing volunteer team
This year we recruited over 20 new people to join the WiNUK volunteer team, and many new guest blog writers too.
After many virtual-only group meetings, we saw our first in-person volunteer meet-ups this year – including at Cambridge’s Zoology Museum, the British Neuroscience Association Festival, and New Scientist Live. I can’t wait to meet more of you this year as we develop our first in-person WiNUK events.
You can view our current and alumni volunteer members over on Our Team page. Keep in touch with us on social media for upcoming role openings in the team!
Global impact
Despite being titled Women in Neuroscience UK (in relation to where our organisation has been established), we have successfully engaged volunteers, followers and event participants, globally! It’s been amazing to see you signing up for our events from 38 different countries, and to see our worldwide following on social media grow too. Regardless of our name, we want WiNUK to be a community open to people everywhere and it’s fantastic to see you taking up our opportunities!
Six educational events
This year we aimed to deliver monthly events during term time, with our annual record of six virtual events and 555 audience sign-ups.
It was great to start the year with conversations on managing stress, self-care and mental health in academia. Read more about our February event, ‘Minds Matter: Let’s Talk About Mental Health’, in our blog by Lauren.
In March we learned about ‘Opportunities in Dementia Research’ from representatives of ISTAART, Alzheimer’s Research UK and the UK Dementia Research Institute. This event garnered our most global audience to date, with registrants from 25 countries.
Our event on ‘Alternate Careers in Neuroscience’ in April, featuring a science illustrator, neuroscience communicator for children, and dementia conference organiser, was the most popular of our events this year, with 161 registrants.
In May we focused on stroke, and were proud to put together an event covering the experiences of a stroke survivor, innovative stroke research, as well as valuable information from Stroke Association.
After the summer break, our team got back to developing virtual events, with the next focusing on ‘Inclusion and Belonging: Addressing Neurodiversity’ in November. It was a fantastically balanced event between lived experience of PhD researchers with ADHD and novel research from leading neurodiversity scientists.
Our final event of 2023 was ‘Decoding the Application Process’. The team are very proud of our new Events Team volunteers who hosted this one excellently, fielding fantastic questions from the audience to our panel of experts across academic career stages, as well as industry.
We’re still working on detailed evaluation of the feedback and impact of our 2023 events to include in WiNUK’s Annual Impact Report- keep your eyes peeled for this!
For any events you missed from 2023, head to our YouTube channel to catch up.
Social media community growth
This year our social media really took off, with 132 new posts to our Instagram, X and LinkedIn, and each of these are now at almost 1000 followers. You appreciated our virtual events being recorded to catch up with on our YouTube channel too.
You enjoyed our social media ‘how to’ guides on scientific papers and CVs, as well as our advice on fostering inclusive working environments, specifically on neurodiversity and gender equity.
Our most popular content, across all engagement metrics, included statistics on the decline in female scientists with increasing career stage seniority. I am, personally, so proud that WiNUK are initiating conversations on this important topic, to inspire better structures for support of women in neuroscience across all career stages.
One of WiNUK’s highlights of 2023 was my takeover of the UKDRI Twitter, now X, on behalf of WiNUK for International Women’s Day in February. This was a fantastic opportunity to highlight female role models in dementia research, but also the sex and gender inequalities in dementia care, treatment and research. Our collaboration was hugely successful, uniting charities, universities and researchers in these conversations. And you don’t just have to take my word for it- on my takeover day, the engagement on UKDRI account hugely increased to 7x their average retweets and 24x their average number of replies! Thank you to the UKDRI Communications Team for trusting us with this collaboration and for continuing to support our mission.
In September we launched our new social media series, ‘Present your Lab Technique’, where neuroscientists opened the door to the ‘behind the scenes’ of their research, through infographics, videos and live Q&As. These monthly features have been a great source of inspiration for aspiring scientists at high school level up to experienced researchers, and we’re excited to see this project continue in 2024.
Do go and follow @WomeninNeuroUK on social media if you haven’t already! We’ll soon be relaunching our TikTok so keep your eyes peeled for that too!
Guest bloggers increased their science communication experience, and inspired others
Our web blog has expanded considerably in quantity and engagement this year, with 38 new blogs and over 2.4k reads.
Our blog team launched several successful new blog series this year, including ‘Preparing your Postgraduate Pathway’ advice pieces and ‘Spotlight On…’ neuroscientist interviews.
Of our three blog sections, you loved ‘Reality’ the most, reading insights and advice from our knowledgeable community. Our most read blog of 2023 was ‘Alternatives to Masters’ by Rachel McKeown, with 395 reads.
Our most popular ‘Research’ article was on the topic of a new Alzheimer’s drug, written by Rebecca Parker and Lizzie English.
Finally, our most popular ‘Review’ article was on ‘Meritocracy in Academia’ from Lauren Wallis, inspired by Caroline Criado-Perez’s book ‘Invisible Women’.
From the blogs published in the last six months of 2023, different articles came out on top: Katherine Mortimer’s ‘PhD with ADHD’ received 210 reads in the Reality section, of Research was Amy Elliott’s ‘Evolutionary Underpinnings of Dreaming’, and of Review was Carly Hood’s ‘The Gendered Brain’ based on Gina Rippon’s book.
It’s been fantastic to see high quality articles on various exciting topics from our Resident Blog Writers and Guest Writers alike. Big thanks go to our in-house editing team who support writers through the process.
If you’re keen to develop your science writing skills this year, whether you have your own idea for a blog or would prefer to be inspired by our editors’ prompts, head to our Writer’s Guide, or get in touch with us via email at blog.womeninneuroscience.uk@gmail.com, to find out more.
Top fans loved being part of our mailing list
Each month we aimed to provide our mailing list subscribers with additional exclusive WiNUK content, the things we do for our top fans! Our email newsletters have included highlights across WiNUK platforms, behind the scenes insights from our volunteers, sneak peeks at upcoming events and curated messages from yours truly.
This year, we shared eight newsletters and several more emails, and we’ve seen nearly 300 new members join our mailing list (hello if that’s you, or if you’ve been subscribed for even longer)!
You may have noticed a revamp to our newsletter PDF designs, as well as the designs of our emails recently, with huge thanks to new WiNUK volunteers who joined us in September (Ananya R and Hana, respectively).
If you’re a WiNUK fan but don’t get our special emails, where have you been?! Register for the WiNUK mailing list at the bottom of our website: Contact | Womeninneurouk
Our first award nominations
We were blown away to receive over 100 votes for the National Diversity Awards in May. We didn’t make the shortlist this year but were beyond grateful for your unexpected huge support.
Later in the year, I was nominated for the UK DRI Engagement Prize for my work in establishing Women in Neuroscience UK. No win this time, but massive thanks to the mystery nominator!
Amazing feedback
More important to us than any award is your valuable feedback on WiNUK’s content. In our event feedback forms, on social media and in event nominations, we’ve seen beautiful testimonials on the positive impacts that Women in Neuroscience UK has had upon you.
From giving you ‘the confidence to believe in’ yourself, to helping you to ‘be more inclusive and reduce the amount of bias’ within your own work environment, it has been an honour to read individual accounts of how WiNUK has benefited you!
Visit our Testimonials webpage to view some of these comments.
Exciting collaborations
It’s been amazing for WiNUK to form collaborations with prominent neuroscience organisations on events and social media projects this year, including UK Dementia Research Institute, Alzheimer’s Research UK and Stroke Association.
As WiNUK continues to grow, we’re looking to expand upon our collaborations and sponsorships in 2024. If you are a company, charity or individual who aligns with WiNUK’s mission and would be interested in working with us, please contact Lizzie at womeninneuroscience.uk@gmail.com.
Wrapping up
That’s a wrap for WiNUK in 2023, but we’re just getting started…
This year, our content has been designed to connect you with a welcoming community, but also to educate you in several ways. Not only in the typical sense, with speakers and our graphics often sharing knowledge on neuroscientific content, but also educating on the challenges for women with neurological conditions and sharing our recommendations for inclusive scientific workplaces, to reduce the difficult career experiences of female neuroscientists. I hope that women and girls have found WiNUK platforms to be a safe haven of support this year, where your voices have been heard and amplified. I sincerely thank our speakers and our volunteers this year for your willingness to share your thoughts and experiences to help our audience of mixed genders to all strive for better conditions for women in science.
Join us in 2024 for more inspiring neuroscience and careers advice, networking connections, and advocacy for inclusive science communities for all.
This will be a big year for WiNUK, with our first in-person event and physical merchandise coming very soon – this is all still confidential but will be hot news soon, so stay tuned to our social media and mailing list!
To all our WiNUK supporters, I wish you a happy and healthy 2024, filled with successes in your science, career and personal life.
From Lizzie English, Founder of Women in Neuroscience UK
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This article was written by Lizzie English and edited by Rebecca Pope. Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch!
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