The British Science Association’s Smashing Stereotypes campaign is back for British Science Week – highlighting diverse people and careers in science, technology, engineering, and maths with the aim of inspiring the next generation.
Running for a seventh year, Smashing Stereotypes launches on Monday 2 March during National Careers Week and runs across British Science Week (6 - 15 March 2026).
It celebrates trailblazers in science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) sectors, who share stories about their career journeys and day-to-day working lives.
The 2026 campaign is the biggest to date, featuring eight new videos and written stories from remarkable people who, in different ways, challenge long-standing stereotypes about what it means to work in science.
These include the founder of a sustainable fashion brand who shows young Muslim women that they can be business leaders; the two women who co-founded a multi-national tech company’s Black employees network; and a nuclear industry Head of Engineering who left school with few GCSEs but had a drive to work hard and get to the top.
All eight scientists in this year’s campaign talk about their backgrounds, motivations, what they might have done to overcome challenges, and offer advice and inspiration for young people or those looking to make a career change a little later in life.
VISIT THE SMASHING STEREOTYPES CAMPAIGN
The British Science Association is a charity with a vision for science to be more relevant, representative, and connected to society. It believes that science should be for everyone - whatever your interests, background, or career path.
As well as showcasing inspiring role models, another aim of Smashing Stereotypes is to highlight the issue of demographic inequity in the STEM workforce.
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27% of the STEM workforce are women, compared to 52% of the wider workforce.
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11% of STEM workers have a disability compared to 14% of the wider workforce.
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This ‘double underrepresentation’ means that just 4% of the STEM workforce are disabled women, compared to 8% of the wider workforce.
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While the percentage of the STEM workforce that are from ethnic minorities is similar to the wider UK workforce (12%), amalgamating minoritised groups skews the data, so that it appears more ethnically diverse than it is.
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Greater representation of workers of Indian ethnicity in the STEM workforce masks the underrepresentation of Black workers, specifically Black women and Black-African men. The relative diversity of the health sector also contributes to this when compared to less diverse sectors, such as engineering.
Introducing the 2026 Smashing Stereotypes scientists:
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Ayesha Mustafa is the founder of sustainable fashion brand, Everyday Phenomenal. Childhood memories of creating clothing from repurposed materials alongside an internship at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh opened her eyes to the world of sustainable fashion.
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Dedun Oyenuga specialises in Experience Research and Design at Microsoft. She is also the co-leader of the company’s first Black employee support network in the UK.
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Anjola Adebowale is a Data and AI Consultant at Microsoft. Alongside Dedun, she co-leads the company’s first Black employee support network in the UK.
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Daniel Clarke, Head of Project Engineering, oversees project engineering teams globally and multi-billion pound investment upgrades across Urenco’s four sites in the UK, Europe and the US.
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Mohammed Essa is an Isotopes Intern at Urenco. Although Mo grew up in a family of medics he wasn’t interested in following his sisters down that route, so he took a chance on a career in the new and growing field of radiopharmaceuticals.
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Irene Mbutu-Austin, Nuclear Medicine Technologist and a PhD student at King's College London. She started a PhD in her 50s, looking at chronic low-dose radiation exposure for nuclear medicine technologists.
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Rugile Sestokaite is a Systems Integration Engineer at Illumina, working on the hardware and software essential to diagnosing diseases and improving lives. She has a physical disability called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, an inheritable genetic condition since birth.
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Ros Jackson, Director of Scientific Research at Illumina, is a retrained mum of three who undertook a PhD following an eight-year career break at a time when tech was transforming to re-enter the world of science.
Each Smashing Stereotypes story includes short films, written interviews, and photography, with content shared across the Smashing Stereotype’s website and British Science Association’s social media channels, focusing on Tik Tok and Instagram, throughout British Science Week.
The British Science Association is also inviting individuals and organisations to get involved and create their own social media content and tag #SmashingStereotypes #BSW26.
For Smashing Stereotypes this year, the British Science Association has partnered with:
Urenco, an international supplier of enrichment services and nuclear fuel cycle products; Illumina, a company developing sequencing and array technologies to drive advances in life science research and translational and consumer genomics; and King’s College London’s School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences.