Tomas Brage is a professor of physics at Lund University. He has also worked at Vanderbilt University and NASA GSFC. He is strongly involved in work on Gender and Science, where he is regularly giving talks on “Gender and Physics” around Europe. He is a steering group member of the LERU Policy Group for EDI and participate in the GENERA network and the GenderEX Horizon 2020 project. He is the chair of the section for equality, diversity and inclusion of the Swedish Physical Society and has led or co-led projects on Gender Certification, Antidiscrimination, Core Values, bi-focal mentoring and Unconscious Bias observers in Lund and beyond.
Gender bias in academia – a threat to academic values.
Meritocracy, academic freedom for everybody and excellence in research and teaching are common and important core values for universities. However, there are many challenges to these, not the least from external pressure in a neo-liberal era. However, the most important threat might come from internal shortcomings. In academia, selections and evaluations are daily practices and important parts of e.g. career paths and assessment of students. Lately more and more evidence, research and studies show that our preconceived ideas – our bias – is a clear obstacle for a fair process and points to that mitigating its effects is essential to defend, not the least, the meritocratic principle.
In this talk, Prof. Brage will discuss bias both as a psychological and individual problem, but also as a systemic, where processes get hi-jacked. He will discuss how it can lead to micro-aggressions and, if not counteracted, to worse – harassment and discrimination. Prof. Brage will bring up examples on how to mitigate this problem, by referring to some “toolboxes” and good practices, from European networks such as LERU.
In October 2023, our eument-net member „kite-mentoring“ program will celebrate its anniversary „Flying to new heights with kite-mentoring – 10 years of empowering women“ at the University of Freiburg. The European mentoring network will support this celebration with a joint International conference on 12-13October 2023 for its members and all interested parties.
Two keynote speakers will discuss gender equality and mentoring in academia: Prof. Dr. Tomas Brage (Lund University, Sweden) – “Gender bias in academia – a threat to academic values”
Prof. Dr. Marieke van den Brink (Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands) – “Mentoring in higher education – supporting career development and organizational change”
AGENDA
Day 1, Thursday, October 12, 2023
13:00 Registration for the conference
14:00 Opening & all about „kite-mentoring“
16:00 Key Notes & discussion
18:15 Networkingin the loungewith finger food & refreshments
Day 2, Friday, October 13, 2023
09:30 Eument-net Expert Exchange with input from Prof. Marieke van den Brink
12:30 Lunch & Get Together
13:30 General assembly with special focus on future development and activities of eument-net
15:30 End of eument-net meeting
Learn more about how the „kite-mentoring“ program in Freiburg empowers women in STEM fields (Dr. Evelyn Rusdea), meet mentees, alumnae and mentors involved in the program during flash talks, speak with mentoring tandems from academia and industry, and hear from different role models, such as an alumna who recently held a professorship. There will be also various other offers like a small career fair for mentees and alumnae, including a brief presentation of the invited partners from industry. The first conference day will end with networking in the Lounge of IMBIT including finger food, snacks and refreshments.
The second conference day will begin with a Eument-net Expert Exchange involving Prof. Dr. Marieke van den Brink. In her keynote contribution Prof. van den Brink will explore the effects and possibilities of sponsorship and how inclusive gender equality approaches can be integrated into mentoring programs. This will be followed by an interactive session on sharing outcomes and international expert exchange. The participants will discuss in small groups from the perspectives of mentoring programme coordinators, gender equality officers, career advisors, personnel developers, but also of mentees, mentors, institutions and external drivers. The key aspects will be in the focus of the exchange:
recruitment of mentors and mentors’ skills
attitudes of institutions/awareness within institutions
external influences/driving forces
The Eument-net Expert Exchange will end with a joint discussion in the plenary.
During the lunch break, we cordially invite all the eument-net members and interested parties to an informal Get Together. After the lunch there will be the Annual General Assembly of eument-net. We will focus on future development and activities of eument-net as a network and especially on the members interests and needs. Please bring your ideas.
For those who stay in Freiburg after the conference on Friday, October 13 „kite-mentoring“ and eument-net will organize a joint dinner and social networking event at 19:00 for all attendees at „Paradies“ – a traditional beer garden in Freiburg.
Venue: The Conference will take place on both days at
Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg Faculty of Engineering
IMBIT building (Intelligent Machine-Brain Interfacing Technology)
Georges Köhler Allee 201
79110 Freiburg, Germany
The joint dinner & networking event will take place on Friday October 13 at 19:00 at
Restaurant „Paradies“
Mathildenstr. 26
79106 Freiburg, Germany
Accommodation: Book your own accommodation or take advantage of the contingent of rooms pre-reserved for eument-net members at Hotel Stadt Freiburg near the conference venue. 20 single rooms are available for the special price of €110 per night (incl. breakfast buffet); double rooms are available for the special price of €145 per night (incl. breakfast for two people). Participants are able to reserve rooms directly with the hotel up until 12 September 2023 using the keyword “eument-net”. Please only book in writing by sending an email to .
Breisacher Str. 84
79110 Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
In case of requests, please do not hesitate to contact Ekaterina Masetkina, eument-net chair () or Evelyn Rusdea, kite-mentoring coordinator and member of eument-net executive board ().
Invited experts Lisa Kamlade and Thomas Berghoefer from the Genera Network are going to give a keynote talk based on their knowledge and experience regarding gender equality in higher education and research. The experts will offer an European view on mentoring as a measure to improve for gender equality.
Please save the date of the next Eument-net Expert Exchange: September, 6th 10:00-12:00 a.m. CET, online
We invite all eument-net members and interested mentoring experts to discuss and exchange on your approaches and experiences towards gender equality within your current or future mentoring programs.
GENERA is a gender equality network in Physics in European research area. Since 2015 GENERA has boosted awareness on the issue of gender equity in physics. The GENERA consortium prepared all tools necessary to tailor and implement gender equality plans (GEPs) and gender equality measures in the participating institutions. In the GENERA toolbox, for example, more than 100 good practice measures to support gender equality in physics institutions have been compiled. All necessary steps to implement a GEP have been described in the GENERA Roadmap. Guided by a project internal evaluation the individual institutions created and implemented their GEPs.
Thomas Berghoefer, Senior Scientist
Copyright: PRIVAT
Dr.Thomas W. Berghoefer studied Physics and Astrophysics in Marburg, Bochum, and received a PhD in Munich. He won a Humboldt fellowship to work at the Space Sciences Lab at UC Berkeley. During his active research career, he was working in X-ray and EUV astronomy at the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics, UC Berkeley, and University of Hamburg. While working at the University of Hamburg he was appointed as one of the women’s representatives in the faculty of physics. He holds a degree in higher education didactics and e-learning methods from the University of Hamburg. Later he became a science programme manager in the German research funding system of the federal government. He coordinated several larger European consortia on research funding, R&D, and gender in physics. Thomas Berghöfer is currently the coordinator of GENERA Network.
Lisa Kamlade, Project manager
Copyright: PRIVAT
Lisa Kamlade studies business psychology (M.Sc.) in Hamburg and works as a full-time project manager at DESY, Hamburg.
In the GENERA project she was the Implementation Manager coordinating between all relevant stakeholders involved in the implementation of a Gender Equality Plan at DESY. After GENERA project she worked in the European project ACT as a Community of Practice (CoP) facilitator. Alongside, Lisa is the vice-coordinator of the GENERA Network since 2018 and she’s part of the European project Einstein Telescope (INFRA-DEV). LinkedIn Profile
Report on mentoring exchange of specialists of education and mentoring of Biology Center, Czech Academy of Sciences, České Budějovice
Networking is a very important part of the most successful projects. The past three years showed us that even the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic can’t stop us from implementing our plans. Thanks to the online environment, we have been able to continue networking, working and discussing even in times of total lockdown. But there is certainly no doubt that there is nothing like a face-to-face meeting, a personal touch, sharing experiences in person and undoubtedly the added value of building personal contacts on a large European scale. This was one reason why we decided to plan a series of in-person meetings in June 2022 focused on an exchange of mentoring experiences between the coordinators of the mentoring programme at the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences and coordinators from several universities in Germany. Thanks to eument-net membership and on the advice of the former chair of eument-net, Katerina Cidlinska, all these meetings became possible!
Our journey to explore mentoring experiences started in Dusseldorf, at Heinrich Heine University. Ekaterina Masetkina invited us to the anniversary ceremony of the SelmaMeyerMentoring programme and opening of Selma-Meyer-Straße on the campus. During this ceremony, we had a chance to hear many inspiring stories and to speak with the mentors and mentees. We also had a very interesting conversation with a mentor of the SelmaMeyerMentoring programme, Marcus Holzheimer, who helps to prepare participants of mentoring programmes for their future career. During our visit, we moreover had a very insightful discussion with gender equality officers Anja Vervoorts and Claudia Balan about the German science system and problems of gender (in-)equality that German women scientists face. Later, we had an opportunity to discuss mentoring experiences and programmes with the mentoring coordinator Kati Korst, who travelled from RWTH Aachen University specially to meet us and to talk about the advantages of the mentoring programmes.
The next day, we took a train straight to Cologne where mentoring coordinator Phuong Glaser and head of mentoring Kathrin Pieper had arranged a meeting with us and the members of the HR department. We shared our experiences from mentoring programmes and learned about the different types of mentoring offered by the University of Cologne. Thanks to Phuong, we had a chance to attend an event relating to gender equality and the glass ceiling in academia.
One week later, we continued our “mentoring trip” to Greifswald. This time, our two colleagues from the grants office of the Biology Centre CAS accompanied us. We received a very warm welcome from Annette Ehmler from Greifswald University with whom we learned more about the university’s interesting history first. Later, we obtained comprehensive information about mentoring programme(s) and the Mentothek and were really impressed. Our colleagues from the grants office shared differences and similarities between the two institutions in many aspects of grant support for scientists.
After two fruitful days in Greifswald, we continued on to Kiel. Our plan was to meet and discuss the Via_mento programme with Ruth Kamn and gender equality activities with Iris Werner. Despite the very strict Covid situation in Kiel, both were eager to share their experiences with us and we learnt a lot from them.
And how can we summarize our June 2022? Sharing, discussing and gaining new knowledge helped us to understand the similarities between the problems at different institutions and in two countries. We have to point out that personal visits and experiences served as a huge inspiration for us and encouraged us, giving us the feeling that our work does indeed make a difference. We are very grateful for this feeling! We would like to thank all colleagues from Germany again for finding time to meet with us and share their knowledge. Many thanks for the impressive work they do!
Foto Copyright HHU Dusseldorf: left to right: Bastlová Daša (CZ), Dr. Dorothea Uhle (D), Marcus Holzheimer (D) and Vrabcová Tina (CZ) during the anniversary ceremony of the SelmaMeyerMentoring programme in Dusseldorf
On 7th December 2022 a member of eument-net, Annette Ehmler, is going to share the best practice to increase the visibility of women scientist (mentees and alumnae) at the University of Greifswald (Germany).
University of Greifswald, situated in the North-Eastern part of Germany, is a fairly small institution of higher education with approx. 10,000 students. Female students, PhDs and postdoctoral researches have the opportunity to participate in various mentoring programmes of KarriereWegeMentoring. For the tenth anniversary of the mentoring-programmes in 2021, KarriereWegeMentoring established a variety of events and activities. Some of them – like the Mentothek or the advent calendar – focussed on mentees and alumnae and aroused a nationwide interest. Both activities also contributed to more visibility of mentoring and the participants involved. Annette Ehmler will present both activities: What was the idea about – how were they realised and what tips can she give to those, who plan similiar activities?
We invite you cordially to the Online Expert Exchange on December 7th, 2022 from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. All eument-net members are invited via e-mail. If you are not a member but you would like to take part, please feel free to apply eument.netATgmail.com until December 5th in order to get the link for the event.
Annette Ehmler has studied English, Italian and Economics in Kassel (DE), Siena (IT) and Cork (IRL) and is employed at University of Greifswald (DE) since 1996. She was Institutional ERASMUS Coordinator for many years, before she moved to the Gender Equality Office. Since 2011 she is responsible for two mentoring-programmes: one addressing female postdoctoral researchers and juniorprofessors and one addressing female PhD-researchers. All programmes are funded by European Social Funds and the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Eument-net Online Expert Meeting on November, 8th 2021
eument-net carried out the international digital expert exchange on evaluation of mentoring programmes for the eument-net members and all other interested mentoring experts. The meeting took place on November, 8th, 2021 from 9 AM till 3 PM. More than 50 representatives from ten countries participated in the conference with three keynote speaches (Dr. Elizabeth Pollitzer from UK, Dr. Anke Lipinsky from Germany and Dr. Angela Wroblewski from Austria). After the lunch there were vivid discussions in the mutual learning groups on external and internal evaluations as well as in the open space breakout room „evaluation – lessones learned“.
“Evaluation of Mentoring Programmes – Learnings for the Future”
The Czech Centre for Gender and Science at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the eument-net European Network of Mentoring Programs for the Advancement of Equal Opportunities and Cultural and Institutional Change in Academia and Research invite you to save the date for the online conference Mentoring in Academia and Research: a Tool to Improve Gender Equality in Human Resource Managementwhich will be held on 23 October 2020. A Zoom link to the meeting will be sent to registered participants at a later date.
