Project duration: 
2019 - 2021

Gender Equality Academy aims

The general goal of the GE Academy project is to develop and implement a coherent and high-quality capacity-building programme on gender equality (GE) in research and innovation (R&I) as well as in Higher Education (HE). GE Academy will develop and provide a series of comprehensive training formats and tailor-made training materials for trainers, practitioners and researchers, making these available to the widest possible audience in Europe and beyond. The GE Academy, with its full capacity-building programme including different training formats (Train-the-Trainers, physical trainings and interactive workshops, Summer Schools, webinars, online Distributed Open Collaborative Courses), will be built and executed in at least 15 countries. Through its ambitious setup, the project aims at filling a gap in the current EU research landscape, marked by ongoing gender inequality in research organisations, the gender dimension of R&I being ignored or under-addressed, whereas needs in terms of gender awareness and capacity are recognised, but efforts to remedy the situation are still fragmented. The project will respond to the needs of those who contribute to and are involved in institutional change towards gender equality in R&I as well as in HE. The GE Academy will both tackle issues of gender equality in research institutions and research teams through structural change and address the gender dimension of research contents, following the three main ERA objectives for gender equality in research. At the same time, a pan-European network of gender trainers will be established, trained, coached and upskilled for delivering gender training sessions to R&I and HE communities in Europe and beyond. Throughout the project’s lifetime, attention will be paid to seeking modalities and solutions for ensuring the sustainability of the GE Academy project beyond the EU funding period.

2020

The coronavirus pandemic caused a significant change of plans for Gender Equality Academy in 2020, as the project is based on training formats, such as summer schools, workshops and sessions, which usually take place in person. The planned training activities on increasing skills and deepening the expertise of HR professionals, researchers, management of research performing organisations, gender trainers and experts were thus partly postponed and partly changed to the online format.

Among the rescheduled events are the workshop “Participatory methods for gender equality in science,“ workshop “Engaging stakeholders in the design and implementation of Gender Equality Plans in research institutions,“ Train-the-Trainers session in Berlin,  the Summer School in Dublin on “Gender Equality Plans: from design to implementation, monitoring and evaluation“ and the Summer School in Madrid on “Gender in research in the scientific fields of climate, energy and mobility.“ Webinars held during the pandemic concerned topics such as different discursive frameworks for gender equality in research and higher education, bias and resistances or integrating sex and gender in research content.

An online format novelty in GE Academy is the initiation of the Discursive Open Collaborative Course (DOCC). DOCC is a highly interactive online learning programme that aims at condensing the best available knowledge and expertise on Gender Equality in Research and Innovation stemming from the GE Academy partners and an extended network of contributing nodes and projects from across Europe. The very first DOCC on “Gender Equality in research and innovation: the journey towards Institutional Change" will last eight weeks and offer the opportunity to enhance knowledge of the main EU policy frameworks and priorities on gender equality in research and innovation, understand the institutional change concept and the steps to foster it by designing, implementing and monitoring Gender Equality Plans or use a multiplicity of arguments to engage and advocate on gender equality in research.

 

Principal investigator: 
Apostolos Vontas, VILABS OE
Lut Mergaert, YELLOW WINDOW
Giovanna Murari, CONOSCENZA E INNOVAZIONE SOCIETA ARESPONSABILITA LIMITATA SEMPLIFICATA
Maria Sangiuliano, SMART VENICE SRL
Vera Regitz-Zagrosek, CHARITE - UNIVERSITAETSMEDIZIN BERLIN
Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID
Bente Knoll, B NK GMBH
Laura Lagan, THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST
Elisabeth Kohler, CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
Lilla Jakobs, KOZEP-EUROPAI EGYETEM
Linda Rustad, NORGES FORSKNINGSRAD
Topics: 
EU
gender
Grant agency: 
International project

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Gender Equality Academy