Equity, Diversity, Inclusion work
Dr. Sikka is Director of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion: School of Arts and Cultures, in this role she has:
Created an EDI staff VLE page including talks from international speakers and a resource page.
April 27th 2023, With EDI co-director and a colleague from Law organized an event for students to engage with intersectionality and anti-racism. It included creative stalls, invited speakers, and engagement spaces. It was aimed towards creating a space for collaboration, learning, and fun, and international students were enthusiastically invited. PGR and UG students helped to organize and were paid equitably.
From this event, she secured a curated photographic exhibition of prominent women of color from the North East to be displayed at the University.
For Queer History Month, she organized Behind the Lens, a project inviting LGBTQ+ students to submit photos with a short reflection on their experiences of queerness and queer joy on campus and/or how University spaces cultivate, shape or impede LGBTQ+ inclusivity. These have been collected on a blog for wider consumption and as a form of archival knowledge making and digital activism.
She is the central author of Media, Culture, Heritage anti-racism statement.
Lead on Media, Culture, and Heritage’s Pedagogical, Pastoral, and Inclusivity Project.
Professional associations and public service
Editorial board member: Humanities & Social Sciences Communication (Nature, Springer)
Reviewer for Sage Press, 2023
Reviewer for Bristol University Press, 2022
Guest Editor, 2019/2020: Global Media Journal: Canadian Edition. “Mediations of Food: Identity, Power, and Contemporary Global Imaginaries.” Volume 11, Issue 1
Reviewer for Journal of Consumer Culture, 2018
Manuscript Reviewer for Bloomsbury, 2017
Reviewer for Communication Inquiry, 2017
Reviewer for Sociological Forum, 2017
Associate Editor of The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability, 2014
Associate Editor of The International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts and Responses, 2014
Reviewer for Technology in Society
Reviewer for Communication Review
Former Managing Editor of Digest, Simon Fraser University
Formerly on the Board of Directors, British Columbia Human Rights Coalition
Canadian Communication Association
Canadian Philosophical Association
Outreach, global activities, and recognitions of note
Forthcoming 2024. Encyclopedia of Sexualities. The entry on consent draws extensively on my work (by Elsie Whittington and Justin Hancock).
August 30 2023. “Exploring Models of Sexual Ethics and Consent using Theatre of the Oppressed.” Workshop Facilitator for an Arts England Funded Project.
July 1 2023. “Justice Recitations.” Consultant and speaker for an Arts England funded project held at Newcastle University led by Lady Kitt.
January-March 2023. Visiting Professor Invitation: Simon Fraser University, Sociology Department. A seminar series and workshop will be organised around my work. I will be the keynote for a conference and am doing further work with colleagues on ongoing projects.
2023. NU Policy funded project output: “Fatness and its intersections” a popular Instagram account (supported by two of my PGR students) focused on pedagogy and public communication around fatness and stigma: @fat.femininity.space.
2022-2023. In my role as Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (School of Arts and Cultures), I organised a student-facing day of workshops and speakers on the topic of intersectionality and organised Behind The Lens, a project inviting queer people to document their experiences of Newcastle University’s campus.
July 2022. Invited as a consultant and speaker for a DEFRA roundtable on UK Environmental Vulnerabilities Arising from Deployed Geoengineering.
2022. Andreas Malm (author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline and involved in the film of the same name), in his article: "The Future Is the Termination Shock: On the Antinomies and Psychopathologies of Geoengineering. Part One." In Historical Materialism (30, no. 4 (2022)): 3-53, references my work.
I am also one of three Newcastle staff who have created an Abolition Feminism for Ending Sexual Violence Collective (with over 100 members) and held a series of three workshops on abolition feminism in Latin America, focused on Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador with guests from those regions. Our key principles are: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR5WDxVRnIbIyi-isaKdSSiZUQS9eShuxuy3b6neM-PFJeM5UxAV4GFYw310eLNc6j10sJbvkxdNFCz/pub