EDI Faculty Grants
UNSW EDI Faculty Grants are back for 2026, offering between $10,000 and $20,000 to innovative projects that promote and embed innovative and inclusive practices across UNSW that reflect the diversity of Australia in our community and ensure that inclusion is part of everything we do. Whether you're an academic or professional staff member, this is your chance to make a lasting impact.
Why apply?
The EDI faculty grants are designed to support initiatives that connect to one or more pillars of the UNSW: Equitable, Diverse, and Inclusive Strategy. This includes initiatives that contribute to:
- Creating an inclusive culture and community at all levels of the university through inclusive practice.
- Reflecting the diversity of the UNSW community (staff and students) and supporting meaningful inclusion by addressing specific barriers and gaps.
- Making UNSW environments more inclusive, accessible, and/or socially sustainable. This could include, for example, user-friendly language, accessible facilities, and learning environments and systems designed with wellbeing in mind. These projects show what’s possible when passion meets funding. At UNSW, we’re building an equitable, inclusive environment where all staff and students thrive.
How to apply
Follow these steps:
- Review your eligibility and complete the application form: check out the EDI Faculty Grant Guidelines and apply here
- Don’t miss the deadline: Applications close COB Feb 25th 2026
We look forward to hearing from you and strongly encourage you to apply.
If you have any questions about the EDI Faculty Grants, please email edi@unsw.edu.au.
FAQs
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EDI Faculty Grants are open to UNSW professional and academic staff from all Faculties and UNSW Canberra.
Grant applications open:
28 January 2026
Grant applications close:
COB 25 February 2026
Grant recipients notified:
6 March 2026
Funding confirmed and part A disbursed:
Week commencing 9 March 2026
Progress report due:
13 July 2026
Final report due:
18 December 2026
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A panel made up of (or equivalent to) the PVC Inclusion SIEE, Director Diversity & Inclusion, and at least two faculty EDI committee representatives will select the successful grant recipients.
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Applications will be ranked based on their eligibility and fulfilment of the selection criteria (see EDI Faculty Grant guidelines).
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No, you are welcome to apply as an individual, but we do encourage collaborations between professional and academic staff where possible to encourage expansive thinking and innovation.
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We encourage EDI faculty grants that are designed to:
support teaching and learning initiatives that intend to positively impact students’ university experience, engagement, and success.
support projects that will build student and staff capacity for promoting a respectful culture and practising inclusivity in their work, study, and interactions.
support existing programs/units of study as well as new projects/activities with potential for expansion and implementation across schools or faculties.
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The funds can be used for any goods or services that support the initiative outlined in your grant application, including salaries (e.g., research assistants). Travel and conference-related costs will not be funded by the EDI Faculty Grants.
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Any funds unspent by the end of 2026 will be returned Diversity and Inclusion, Division of Societal Impact, Equity & Engagement, and D&I Operations.
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The intellectual property created will remain with the grant winner. The final written report will be due to Diversity and Inclusion, Division of Societal Impact, Equity & Engagement in December 2026 summarising the project, expenditure, and its outcomes.
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The Division of Societal Impact, Equity and Engagement will provide funding.
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Please email edi@unsw.edu.au. We are happy to answer any questions on the EDI Faculty Grants scheme.
Access the EDI Faculty Grants Guidelines
EDI Faculty Grants recipients
The EDI Faculty Grants fund initiatives that enhance opportunities for students from socio-economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, students with diverse gender identities, LGBTQIA+ students, students with disability and students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
2026 Recipients
The listed projects were funded based on a pane review that judged applications on measures of impact, feasibility and relevance.
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About the project
Aligned with UNSWs commitment to 'Progress for All', and the imminent Faculty of Medicine & Health strategy 'Better Equitable Health for All', the Graduate Entry Master of Nursing program will be underpinned by the vision of 'Leading Health Equity for All'. To ensure that Leading Health Equity for All underpins curriculum development, the project team will be co-designing the Graduate Entry Master of Nursing (GEMNs) program to encompass the perspectives of consumers, industry and key interest holders. This includes collaborating with First Nations academics and professional staff, as well as co-designing in 7 clinical streams as follows, 1) Health Equity, 2) Mental Health, 3) First Nations Health 4) Acute Care 5) Community based care 6) Care of older adults 7) Paediatrics. Co-design will also be with community consumers including First Nations peoples, people with disability, chronic illness, and people with lived experience of mental health challenges, marginalisation, homelessness, and/or domestic and family violence.
Project leads: Professor Jane Currie, Associate Professor Anita Heywood
Faculty: Medicine and Health
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About the project
The project will scale and embed Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to a targeted group of courses within the faculty of Law & Justice, advancing UNSW's institutional commitment to embed UDL across all courses by 2028. It builds on a successful pilot undertaken in 2025, which involved redesigning three courses in line with UDL principles, demonstrating both feasibility and positive academic engagement. The goal is to enhance accessibility and inclusivity in learning, with particular attention to students from first-in-family or low socio-economic backgrounds, students from non-English speaking backgrounds, and those experiencing physical or mental health challenges or who are neurodivergent.
Project leads: Dr Angie Nguyen, Myriam Boisseau
Faculty: Law & Criminology
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About the project
The UNSW Canberra Gender Equity Mentoring & Sponsorship Program is an inclusive, evidence-based initiative designed to strengthen leadership capability, career progression, and psychosocial wellbeing for staff who experience gender-based inequities. This includes women (cis and trans), nonbinary and gender diverse staff, LGBTIQ+ communities, and those whose intersecting identities compound barriers to advancement. The program also welcomes men as mentors and mentees, recognising their role as allies and contributors to cultural change.
Project leads: Dianne Ferguson, Natalie Gee, Oleksandra Molloy
Faculty: UNSW Canberra
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About the project
Inclusive Entrepreneurship Pathways is a cross-faculty equity initiative led by ADA EDI and Engineering EDI, delivered in collaboration with UNSW Founders, to address structural barriers limiting diverse students' access to entrepreneurship at UNSW. Students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, international students, first-in-family pathways, women and gender diverse communities, students with disability, LGBTQIA+ students, and those from ADA and Engineering and outside traditional business disciplines are less likely to identify with entrepreneurship or perceive it as accessible or financially viable. Collaborating with the UNSW Founders Student Ambassador Program, the project will enable the formal development and implementation of considered equity mechanisms, formalising inclusion through participation funding, codesigned and accessible training and support, demographic tracking and faculty-level evaluation.
Project leads: William Nguyen, Josh Weisburger
Faculty: Arts, Design, and Architecture & Engineering
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About the project
The initiative is student-centred and partnership-based: students will co-design a campus-facing campaign, short videos, seminars/workshops, and concise learning resources. To reflect UNSW's cultural and linguistic diversity, campaign assets will be delivered in multiple languages commonly used by international students (e.g., English, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, and Korean).
Project team: Dr Kean Poon, Zili Chen
Faculty: Arts, Design, and Architecture
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About the project
The Community Culture Libraries project comprises of the installation of a series of themed, street-style community libraries across campus, each dedicated to celebrating and supporting a distinct cultural or identity-based community within the university. These small, publicly accessible book-sharing libraries will serve as visible symbols of inclusion, education, and belonging, while also functioning as practical hubs for culturally relevant resources. Each library will be themed around a specific community, such as LGBTQIA+, First Nations, and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities, with potential expansion to other underrepresented groups across campus. The libraries will feature books by and about members of these communities, including literature, academic texts, memoirs, poetry, and community-authored works. Each library will also include a prominently displayed QR code linking users to a curated digital resource hub.
Project team: Jace Dent
Faculty: Arts, Design, and Architecture
2024 Recipients
The listed projects were funded based on a panel review that judged applications on measures of impact, feasibility and relevance.
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About the project:
‘ADA Stories: Reimagining Inclusion on Campus’ aims to tackle issues of empowerment, equity, systems, services, health and climate. Key outputs include the intersectional mapping of campus experiences with a strong focus on co-creation and participatory design with queer students of diverse lived experience. The project seeks to promote empowerment through art and expression to reshape campus spaces and cultivate allyship across UNSW, by producing community-led events and inclusive practices and policies, as well as by enabling student-led advocacy.
Project team: Emma Peters, Emma Kirby, Josh Wiesberger
Faculty: Arts, Design & Architecture
Award amount: $16,252
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About the project:
‘“Everyone’s business”: Building Capacity in Master of Public Health’ seeks to support MPH staff in their journey to embed best practice training in First Nations’ cultural safety across core courses as well as enable staff to create and invite students to actively build learning environments that are respectful of all cultural differences and that are inclusive of First Nations’ experiences and knowledge, and free from racism. Ultimately, the project supports collaboration between Indigenous stakeholders and communities and MPH academic staff to inform the development of a new Program Learning Outcome (PLO) on First Nations cultural safety in the MPH.
Project team: Niamh Stephenson, Katrina Blazek, Timothy Dobbins, Anita Heywood, Peter Malouf, Sally Nathan, Sophie Pitt
Faculty: Medicine & Health
Award amount: $20,000
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About the project:
The First Nations Engineering Science Society is conceived with the objective to create a society that supports, inspires and engages current and future First Nations students within the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Science. The project critically endeavours to link culture and technology, hand-in-hand for the betterment of UNSW students, fostering an understanding and appreciation of Indigenous history and tools, and as such, culminates in the development of boomerang-powered drones.
Project team: Sonya Brown, Sarah Grundy, Tyson Namok, Isabella Zdravkovic, Harry Brotherhood
Faculty: Engineering
Award amount: $10,000
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About the project:
Building on work involving big data analytics that monitored the performance of students and offered them targeted support to ensure retention and success, the aim of ‘Education support to make students shine’ is to give all students equal opportunities in Electrical Engineering. The project will do this by expanding existing open laboratories and student drop-in centres, as well as by fostering universal design learning (UDL) practices, mapping existing instructional material and approaches that align with UDL in two large key courses in Electrical Engineering (ELEC1111 and ELEC2134), and using the UDL framework to adapt additional instructional material and approaches that do not align with UDL to increase student engagement and satisfaction.
Project team: Dr. Inma Tomeo-Reyes, Roy Zeng
Faculty: Engineering
Award amount: $10,000
2023 Recipients
In 2023, EDI Faculty Grants funded initiatives that improve opportunities, support and outcomes for students from low socio-economic status (low-SES) backgrounds to support the Gateway Equity Target. Additionally, the grants provided seed funding to engage greater areas of the University in the development and implementation of innovative inclusive teaching and learning initiatives.
The listed projects were fully funded based on a panel review that judged applications on measures of impact, feasibility and relevance.
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Project team: Dr Laura McKemmish, Dr Laura McKnight
Faculty: Science
Award amount: $20,000
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Project team: Dr Inmaculada Tomeo-Reyes, Mr Roy Zeng, Dr Arash Khatamianfar
Faculty: Engineering
Award amount: $20,000
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Project team: Terry Cumming, Ian McArthur, Karen Kriss, Karin Watson, Veronica Jiang
Faculty: Arts, Design & Architecture
Award amount: $25,924
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On the engagement, science identity, and career aspirations of under-represented student groups
Project team: Dr Sara Kyne, Dr Laura McKemmish, Dr Lauren McKnight
Faculty: Science
Award amount: $19,605
Two projects received partial funding to assist with the development of ethics applications:
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Project team: Mr Chris Pearce, Professor Tracie Barber, Associate Professor Greg Smith
Faculty: Law & Justice, Engineering, Medicine & Health
Award amount: $3,000
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Project team: Nicholas Stevens, Sarah White
Faculty: Business
Award amount: $3,000
