LGBTI Pride

UCD Pride Coffee Mornings February 2024

To celebrate Pride and LGBTI+ Inclusion in UCD and building on the success of UCD School of Veterinary Medicine and College of Health and Agricultural Science annual Pride coffee morning, UCD College of Science’s Pride celebration, we are inviting Colleges and VP areas to hold Pride Coffee Mornings for employees in collaboration with UCD Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Unit and UCD EDI LGBTI Subgroup.

To coincide with UCD Students Union's 2nd annual Pride march for Rainbow Week, 20th February, 1pm, Pride coffee mornings for employees are taking place in UCD Colleges and Research, Innovation and Impact from  February 20-29th 2024.  Dates and times of coffee mornings are at the bottom of the webpage.

UCD Pride Parade - Join fellow allies, UCD Students and staff! Starting from the UCD Student Centre at 1PM on 20 Feb! 

UCD Pride Coffee Mornings across the campus:

Why Celebrate Pride?

This is an excellent opportunity for UCD Colleges/Professional Areas to formally ‘come out’ in support of their LGBTI+ colleagues and students. Celebrating Pride affirms the value of LGBTI+ visibility, allyship, and inclusion in fostering UCD’s values of collegiality and diversity.

Benefits of celebrating Pride include: 

• Fostering a welcoming and inclusive, work and learning environment where LGBTI+ people feel they can be open about their sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.
• Recognising the value LGBTI+ people bring in shaping the culture of this University.
• Encouraging greater visible engagement from allies.
• An opportunity for senior leaders to visibly communicate inclusion of LGBTI+ staff and students and promoting allyship.
• Standing in solidarity with LGBTI+ people in Ireland against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. The rise in anti-LGBTI+ violence in Ireland is deeply upsetting. Hate crime statistics published by (opens in a new window)An Garda Síochána in March 2023 indicate that there has been a 29% increase in reported hate crimes & hate related (non-crime) incidents with 582 hate crimes & hate related (non-crime) incidents recorded in 2022 (448 in 202). Sexual orientation was cited as the second most prevalent discriminatory motive after racist attacks. UCD condemns racist and LGBTI+ violence and all hate-related incidents and crimes.
• Leveraging the opportunity for to start/expand dialogue with employees on how your area can foster greater LGBTI inclusion of LGBTI+ employees and students.

UCD EDI Pride Pack

UCD EDI are providing a UCD Pride Starter Pack to support UCD Colleges/VP areas to hold a Pride Coffee Morning. This pack includes:

• Pride Cake 
• Pride Badges
• Pride Lanyards
• Pride Bunting 
• UCD Pride Digital Email Signatures and Posters

Advice is available from UCD LGBTI Subgroup and UCD EDI on organising Pride Coffee Mornings. Contact (opens in a new window)(opens in a new window)edi@ucd.ie for guidance.

Playback: How To Be An Ally Workshop 

In association with Dublin LGBTQ Pride and the Pride at Work training programme, we were delighted to host a workshop for all staff entitled "How To Be An Ally". 

This one hour workshop aimed to show people how they can make a huge difference through everyday acts of kindness. Being an LGBTQ+ ally can make a huge difference for those in the workplace, as well as in everyday life, whether you show your allyship by showing up to Pride Parades or just standing up against homophobia or transphobia. It is super easy too – but sometimes we may worry about using our voices in case we offend or say the wrong thing. 

The session was facilitated by Christelle "Chris" Gebhardt (they/them). Christelle joined the Dublin Pride Team in November 2020 after graduating from UCD with an MA in Cultural Policy & Arts Management. Initially starting as Communications Assistant, Chris has since taken on the role of Cultural Programming & DEIB Training Manager at Pride. Over the years, they've worked with various arts organisations, festivals and non-profits in their native Austria, Germany and Ireland.

You can watch a video recording of the workshop (23 June 2022) here: