April 2025: New paper published on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion in Academic Practices

Universities are a prominent passage for social transformation, playing a pivotal role in fostering social democracy. Among the key stakeholders in academia, educators hold a unique position in shaping this progress. This paper examines how educators engage with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) through their academic practices, highlighting the transformative potential of these efforts. Conducted at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, this empirical research delves into educators’ perceptions of DEI, their awareness of DEI-related academic policies, and the opportunities and challenges available in promoting social equality through teaching. you can read the article here: “What Are the Students Bringing, and What Are They Taking With Them?” Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion in Academic Practices - Sarah Musubika, Lilli Mittner, 2025 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/15413446251335574

March 2025: New national network - Solidarity Society

On March 12th, the new national network Solidarity Society was launched in Norway. The network aims to promote better gender balance in Norwegian philosophy and increase research collaboration in feminist philosophy among the philosophy departments in Norway. At the seminar, one of the initiators, Oda Davanger (NTNU), presented the idea behind the network, followed by author Ingeborg Owesen (Research Council of Norway), who gave an inspiring lecture on writing about female philosophers, based on her latest work *12 Female Philosophers: From Antiquity to Today*. The seminar concluded with a lively panel discussion on women's role in philosophy and the importance of a national network. You can read more about the event in the online journal Salongen.

March 2025: Workshop on "Excellence” in academia and in evaluations

The Centre for Womens- and Gender Research (SKK) organised a workshop on "Excellence” in academia and in evaluations as part of a series of seminars, worskshops, and discussions about jugdements in academia. The Series is funded by the Research project SKJØNN, lead by the Department of Philosphy (IFF). The workshop was led by Prof. Kate Maxwell and discussed why “excellence” as a concept can be harmful in academic contexts, and considered other possible ways of measuring and evaluating research and teaching. Find the full program here.

February 2025: Online Course - Gender Equality as a Diverse Phenomenon

Gender Equality as a Diverse Phenomenon (5 ECTS) online course with open lectures in Zoom organised by the UActic Thematic Network on Gender in the Arctic Knowledge Production. The focus of this joint course is to explore intersectional gender equality in northern contexts from various perspectives, led by northern researchers from the Arctic universities.  The course meetings will be held on Tuesday afternoons from 14:15 to 15:45 in Finland - 13:15 to 14:45 in Sweden/Norway. All interested audience including researchers and students are welcome to join the lecture series via the following Zoom. Please find the full program here.

2023: Concepts for Gender Equality Work and Research

The Prestige project has published a new book in Routledge on The Gender Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Academia: A Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Transformation. The book is open access and crutinises the conceptual framework for diversity, equity, and inclusion actions in academia to facilitate research-based and critically reflected decisions in higher education management. The book contains 24 chapters, each focused on one of 24 fundamental concepts that are essential for identifying, understanding, and implementing organizational changes and counteracting unjustified disadvantages faced by women and members of other gender minorities in academia, preceded by an introductory binding chapter.

2020: UiT Balancinator web app is born

The Balancinator is a free and open-source software to visualize distribution of men and women within a specific unit. It was originally created in 2020 by Lilli & Matthias Mittner. The Balancinator allows anyone to build generic plots by inserting simple excel sheets instead of writing programming code. The Balancinator allows you to build generic plots that require no coding experiences and to download high quality image files for your report, presentation, poster, role-up etc. You can find and try the app here: https://en.uit.no/resources/balancinator.