An account of the 2008 inaugural Equal Opportunities Conference held at University of East Anglia

The purpose of this paper is to report on the 2008 inaugural Equal Opportunities Conference held at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

The report is based on delegate observations, notes and audience reactions to some of the papers presented on research conducted across Europe, Asia and North America.

The papers represented new boundaries in diversity research. This included research on women's experiences in traditional male domains of Science Engineering and Technology, developments in investigating diversity such as intersectional analysis, resource dependency theory and social movement theory, and insights on the experiences of specific minority ethnic groups, challenging some of the assumptions of within‐group homogeneity in diversity research.

This report integrates a number of themes from diversity research across the world, highlighting some of the progress accomplished so far as well as the suggested direction for future diversity research.