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Dr Clara Barker appointed IOP Inclusion and Diversity Representative

7 November 2023

Dr Barker succeeds Professor Helen Gleeson in the role created to provide advice to the IOP’s Council and the IOP more widely on D&I issues.


The Institute of Physics (IOP) has appointed Dr Clara Barker as its new Inclusion and Diversity Representative.

Dr Barker takes on the position from Professor Helen Gleeson, who was named the IOP’s first Inclusion and Diversity Representative in 2021.

The role was created to provide advice and challenge to the IOP’s governing Council, and the IOP more widely, on inclusion and diversity issues. The Representative attends up to two Council meetings a year and chairs the Inclusion and Diversity Committee.

Sir Keith Burnett CBE, IOP President, said: “I am delighted to welcome Dr Barker as the Representative to Council for Inclusion and Diversity. I’m impressed with her passion for making physics a welcoming place for all and the experience she brings as both an excellent physicist and someone with extensive experience of inclusion and diversity issues. Clara’s knowledge and experience will be a welcome addition for Council to draw upon.”

Dr Barker said: “I’m very excited to be taking on this role at the IOP, following on from the fantastic work that Professor Gleeson has done in the post. If we can change the minds of young people who love physics but think that a physics career is not for them, that will be fantastic. I look forward to working with various different groups who share a passion for physics but feel they cannot achieve their maximum potential. If we can work towards a more inclusive and welcoming physics environment, then the real winner is physics itself.”

Dr Barker is a Daphne Jackson Trust Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Applied Superconductivity and the Dean for Equality and Diversity at Linacre College. She received the Points of Light award from the Prime Minister’s Office in 2017 for her LGBT+ awareness work, and in 2018 won the Individual Champion/Role Model award in Oxford university’s Vice-Chancellor’s Diversity Awards.

In December 2018, she gave a TEDx talk on “Why we need to build trust to create diversity in institutions”.

Dr Barker can be contacted in her capacity as Representative to Council for Inclusion and Diversity at: [email protected].

Dr Clara Barker with equipment in the laboratory