Juju Fars is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Vision Group, and an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Ambassador at OxCIN.
Hi Juju! Can you tell us about your research?
I currently work on lazy eye, or amblyopia. Lazy eye is when perception of one eye does not develop correctly and it can lead to deficits in vision and depth perception. When kids have lazy eye, they wear an eye patch for several months. It’s very common to see this patch on kids in the street. The thing is, this type of treatment does not always work. There’s also a large dropout rate and a lot of others things that make it difficult to follow as a therapy. Which means some adults still experience the lazy eye situation—sometimes part of it, sometimes the whole thing—years and years later. People with lazy eye can struggle with catching things that are thrown at them, some of them can find sports difficult, or have issues with driving because of this lack of depth perception.
My work is to see if, by performing a visual training using virtual reality, it’s possible to re-establish good vision with both eyes. And understand if changes occurred in the brain during the training.
You’re also an EDI ambassador. What does that involve?
OxCIN started an EDI working group a few months ago. I was involved in the OxCIN Open Science Ambassador scheme for more than two years, but I wanted to do something else I was interested in. I’m part of the LGBTQIA+ community, and I think it’s something that’s not considered enough in general.
For Pride, you ran an event about improving diversity in research participants. What was the idea behind it?
I think a lot of people from the LGBTQIA+ community, neurodivergent people, and other minorities, are not included in research. That’s not putting them all in the same bag—it’s just part of the diversity we need to include, to represent the population. Because if they’re not there, we end up with studies that aim to apply to the population, but don’t actually represent it.
I went to Pride because that’s where I might find people who are, for example, intersex, neurodivergent, or on treatments that often exclude them from studies. The aim wasn’t to recruit them directly, but to ask: What would be the best way to reach you? How can we do better to include you in the process?
Why does that kind of inclusion matter?
Some exclusion criteria come from medical research inherited from when the default was white males, 1.70m tall, 80kg—and that’s not reality. If there’s no specific reason to exclude someone, we should consider including them. We have to get out of that default template and select inclusion/exclusion criteria that are only related to answering the research question.
What else can we do to improve inclusion?
There are many ways. The way we communicate research is one—for example if you’re neurodivergent like me, you don’t receive information the same way. So we need to make that more digestible.
We also need to address people where they are. A lot of our participants are other researchers or students. That’s not bad—there’s diversity there—but it’s not population-level diversity. So we have to go where people are.
You also organised some other Pride events, tell us about those?
Yes, I organised two other events for staff and students. One was a quiz, and the aim for that was just to have a fun event and an opportunity to gather together for Pride Month. The other event was a drag makeup session, which was the event I most wanted to do! It took some time to arrange with Tart Productions and Oxfordshire Drag Collective, but it was a really great event. They taught us everything from gluing eyebrows to doing the eyes—I didn’t know how to do eyes, and I really wanted to learn! It was a good turnout, and it was really fun.
What are your overall reflections and why are these events important?
Equality, diversity and inclusion concerns everyone. I don’t think my events were incredibly important, but it matters that we show up. Especially now, when the trans population has lost some important rights over the past two years. We have to support them.
I hope that fun, silly events help. The world is complicated—we need space to cool down together. That’s what I was trying to offer.
Find out more about the OxCIN EDI Ambassador scheme
Find useful resources in the OxCIN LGBTQIA+ Toolkit