Hello and welcome to the first edition of the INSPIRE newsletter! 💛🧡❤️🩷

INSPIRE is a 4-year project funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe programme. It works on advancing inclusive gender equality in research and innovation (R&I) across the public and private sectors, while integrating an intersectional perspective as well. Focused on Europe and Latin America, the project aims to:

• Advance knowledge by conducting high-quality research on inclusive gender equality in R&I
• Create a sustainable support eco-system for equality practitioners
• Develop training resources to drive change towards inclusive gender equality
• Provide evidence to facilitate the dialogue(s) with policymakers and guide policy changes

In recent months, the backlash against equality policies has grown in intensity across the globe with the rise of far-right movements. It is now more important than ever to join forces and fight for a more equal and inclusive world. Follow our journey to stay updated with everything we're doing in INSPIRE to bring this dream closer to reality. 

Who makes up the INSPIRE team? 

The project consortium consists of 14 partners from Europe and Latin America. The coordinating partner is the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. The other members of the consortium are:

• Joanneum Research in Austria 🇦🇹
• Fraunhofer ISI in Germany 🇩🇪
• Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland 🇵🇱
• Notus Applied Social Research in Spain 🇪🇸
• GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany 🇩🇪
• Europa Media Non Profit in Hungary 🇭🇺
• Portia in UK and Germany 🇬🇧🇩🇪
• Radboud University in the Netherlands 🇳🇱
• Hasselt University in Belgium 🇧🇪
• University of Southern Denmark in Denmark 🇩🇰
• ZRC-SAZU in Slovenia 🇸🇮
• FLACSO Argentina in Argentina 🇦🇷
• Innosystems in Greece 🇬🇷

INSPIRE Website Makeover 💻

After a couple of months of reflecting, restructuring, and redesigning, we are finally thrilled to announce that our website got a little makeover! 🤩 With a better user experience in mind, we reimagined the website in a way that is clearer, easy to follow, and a more accurate representation of ourselves and our work! So what changed? In brief, we now feature:

• A dedicated page for each of our Knowledge & Support Hubs or KSHs (KSH1: Driving and Sustaining Change, KSH2: Widening Participation, KSH3: Intersectionality, KSH4: Innovation)
• A dedicated subpage for each of the Communities of Practice (CoPs) supported by the KSHs
• Improved sections dedicated to Training, Support, Policy and Knowledge

...and more! Explore for yourself at: https://inspirequality.eu/ 

INSPIRE joins Bluesky 🦋

Recent developments have driven us to take a step back from X (previously Twitter). However, we decided to channel our energy into building a community on the up-and-coming Bluesky! If you're also part of the wave of early adopters, go follow us on this exciting new platform and let's keep in touch! 👋

CoP in the Spotlight: Intersectionality for Change 📸

Our first Community of Practice to take the (virtual, in this case) stage is Intersectionality for Change! 🙌 

With a fantastic team bringing together top universities and research institutes in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Chile, this CoP is working towards the incorporation of an intersectional perspective in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of gender equality plans, as well as in research and teaching. What have they been up to so far?

• They gathered for a kick-off meeting in Bilbao, at the University of Deusto, on 3 Oct 2024, to meet each other and work in groups to strategise for the upcoming months (finishing off with a feminist tour of the city)
• They conducted several information gathering events to work on their tasks more effectively and facilitate progress
• They started working on a "Research and Teaching with an Intersectional Gender Perspective" document, including the "must do"'s when it comes to integrating intersectionality in research and teaching

Cannot wait to hear more updates from this energetic team!

INSPIRE Blogs ✍️

If you haven't checked our blog section in the past week, we're here to tell you that we've added three new blogs, focusing on:

• The "Intersectionality: application to research and public policies" seminar jointly organised by us and the Equality Unit of the Open University of Catalonia 👉 more about it here
• The Knowledge Exchange Event we conducted in Vienna at the end of Sept 2024 👉 more about it here
• A summary of our last General Assembly meeting in Vienna at the end of Sept 2024 👉 more about it here

News from our sister projects 🫂

It's going to be a busy period for the gender-focused project community, as quite a few final events are coming up! ✨

➡️ATHENA is hosting a high-level policy event at the European Parliament (13 May), followed by the project's final conference (14 May) 👉 details here

➡️MINDtheGEPs is also organising their final conference in May, on 27 May in Rome, sharing the key results and lessons learned from the project 👉 more info here 

➡️SUPPORTER is organising their final conference, with a focus on sports higher education institutions in Central-Eastern Europe and the lessons learned from implementing Intersectional, Innovative, Inclusive, Impactful Gender Equality Plans, in Prague, on 4-5 June 👉 register here

➡️GENDERACTION+ has recently published a highlight video from their final conference, which took place in Brussels earlier this year (our coordinator Rachel Palmén was a panelist in one of the sessions, too!) 👉 watch it here

➡️GenderSAFE have released their first Policy Brief: "Beyond Symbolic Commitment: Taking a Zero-Tolerance Approach to Counteracting Gender-Based Violence" 👉 available here

INSPIRE-ing Highlights ✨

• Our colleague Paulina Sekuła (Jagiellonian University in Kraków) has been appointed as one of the members of the newly-launched Council for Women in Higher Education and Science 👏
• Our colleague Aran Romero Moreno (Open University of Catalonia)'s article exploring the similarities between Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice and Patricia H. Collins' intersectional theory, was recently published in "Sociological Theory" 👉 find it here
• The first two episodes of the INSPIRE Unplugged Dialogues series are now available on our YouTube; the guests are Marry Ann Danowitz, Dean Emerita and Professor of Higher Education Emerita, North Carolina State University (US), and Maria Olivella Quintana, Equality Unit Director at the Open University of California (Spain) 👉 listen to them here
• The "Women's leaders in innovation" initiative by BIOAZUL, part of our KSH4: Innovation network, was selected as a Best Practice by the UN Global Compact

#INSPIRErecommends 🎬📚🎧

• To read 📚: our colleague Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc (ZRC-SAZU) is one of the editors of this compendium including the most representative texts on feminism and women’s rights from East Central Europe between the end of the Second World War and the early 1990s 👉 you can find it at CEU Press & online here
• To watch 🎬: we recommend watching Adolescence , a 4-episode British social drama produced by Netflix that tells the story of a murder committed by a teenage boy, touching upon topics such as toxic masculinity, gender-based violence, and perceptions of gender roles in society 👉 find it here

Coming up next 🚀

What can you expect from the INSPIRE team in the next month? We plan to launch another one of our Open Training Units (this one focused on Inclusive Data Monitoring: From Theory to Indicator Development). We are preparing new dissemination materials to take with us in the upcoming events. We will conduct a co-creation workshop. And, last but not least, we are preparing our technical and scientific reports. 📝

Stay tuned and thank you for supporting our work!