Building community is an important part of the PhD experience and can be vital to helping you to manage stress and achieve a timely completion of your studies. Everyone's experience of the PhD will be different and while your college, faculty, and department will all provide ready-made sites of community, sometimes you might want to connect with other students whose experience more directly reflects your own. As a member of the Cambridge postgraduate community, you also have a responsibility to participate in the creation of an inclusive community for your fellow students and colleagues.

The Cambridge Student's Union is the organisation advocating for student needs and offering support. It's a great place to start if you want to connect with other students. The democratically elected officers are involved in decision-making within the University to ensure that student voices are heard. The SU also runs campaigns around specific issues, including those surrounding BME, LGBT+, disabled students, women, and international students.

In addition, the SU helps student societies. There are currently over 700 societies at Cambridge, so you are likely to find ones that suit your interests in their directory. 

The University takes seriously its commitment to celebrating differences and ensuring that people from all backgrounds have the best possible experience of graduate life. 

The University of Cambridge has a dedicated Equality and Diversity (E&D) team that seeks to engage all members of the University in promoting a truly inclusive environment during their time in Cambridge. The E&D team sits within the University's Human Resources (HR) Division and Unified Administrative Service (UAS). More details on what they do and how to reach them can be found on the University's Equality & Diversity page.

You can learn more by taking the one-hour online module E&D Essentials online module, although you will need a Raven password to access it.