The CIPD work in partnership with Wonderly, a division of Haymarket Media Group Ltd to deliver the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition
![](/cipdace/media/Speaker/Lucy Downes.png)
Lucy Downes
Lecturer in HRM, University of the West of England
Lucy Downes is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), Since joining UWE, she has achieved Fellow status with the Higher Education Academy and has completed the PGcert programme. Lucy’s research interests centre on equality, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace. As part of her dissertation, she explored the social factors that support or hinder the professional identities of senior female aerospace engineers. Since joining UWE, she has worked on a research project investigating the experiences of international students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She has also collaborated with an interdisciplinary team on a Higher Education Innovation Fund-supported project to develop a framework to help engineering organizations recruit and retain neurodivergent employees. Currently, she is working on another project funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund in partnership with Bristol Women in Business Charter and a project funded by Ignite exploring the experiences of neurodivergent energy researchers.