This year’s spring and early summer were a fruitful time for the renewed Community of Practice for Gender Equality in Central and Eastern Europe. Elections for the Steering Committee were held in March. The fourteen voting members decided on the following composition of the group: Patrycja Chudzicka-Dudzik, Anna Knapińska, Petroula Mavrikiou, Rūta Ruolytė-Verschoore and Marta Warat. Since, in the meantime, Rūta Ruolytė-Verschoore had to resign due to a new job (we wish her all the best!), a supplementary voting was held in July. Aurelija Novelskaite joined the Committee.
Here are brief biographies of the Steering Committee members:
Marta Warat, PhD (chairperson) – Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. An assistant professor at the Institute of Sociology. Her main academic interests revolve around gender/policy nexus, social inequalities, citizenship and democracy. From 2006 onwards she has been involved in several research projects (as a researcher and/or coordinator) including among others the most recent project ACT (H2020), EU Differentation, Dominance and Democracy (H2020), Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading Policies of Participation (H2020). She is the local coordinator in Men in Care project (EaSI Programme, EU). She published several journal articles and book chapters and co-edited four volumes including Expertisation and Democracy in Europe, Góra M., Holst C., Warat M. (eds., 2018), London: Routledge, Gender equality and quality of life. Perspectives from Poland and Norway, Warat M., Krzaklewska E., Ratecka A., Slany K. (eds., 2016), Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien: Peter Lang.
Patrycja Chudzicka-Dudzik (deputy chairperson) – University of Lodz, Poland. A research and teaching assistant at the Department of American Studies and Mass Media and an associate at the Women's Studies Centre. Her research activities are in the field of interdisciplinary gender studies. She is particularly interested in feminist theories of visual culture and spectatorship. She co-edited a book on gender in social life and culture. She participated in numerous academic (feminist) conferences, seminars and workshops in Poland and internationally. She has been cooperating as a researcher, tutor/lecturer or board member in a few international research (e.g. UPGEM, WS Debate, Act on Gender) and teaching projects (e.g. GEMMA, InterGender).
Anna Knapińska, PhD – National Information Processing Institute, Poland. An assistant professor in the Laboratory of Databases and Business Analytics. She uses business intelligence tools (reports, dashboards) to improve data quality and support science policy decisions. Her scientific interests include transformation of the Polish R&D sector and women’s participation in research, particularly STEM (the doctoral thesis on professional biographies of female professors in the field of technoscience). As a nominated delegate from Poland, she has participated in the ERAC Standing Working Group on Gender in Research and Innovation which shall advise and support the European Commission and the Council in implementing and monitoring the priority regarding gender equality in the European research area. She is also a statistical correspondent for the She Figures reports, containing indicators on women in the field of research and innovation.
Petroula Mavrikiou, PhD – Frederick University, Cyprus. An associate professor of Statistics at the Business Administration Department and the Director of the Gender Equality and Inclusion Research Unit. She holds a PhD in statistics from the University of Cyprus and a master’s degree in gender studies, intersectionality and change from Linkoping University in Sweden. She is among the founders of the Gender Equality committee of Frederick, and in 2021 she had the leading role in the design of the first Gender Equality Plan of the University. She was also the representative of Frederick University in two Communities of Practice (GEinCEE and Strategies) of the Horizon 2020 Project ACT. Currently, she is running the Erasmus+ KA2 Program Fairness in Teaching, a project which aims to develop good practices and guidelines for fair teaching in STEM to boys, girls, disadvantage pupils and other vulnerable groups of students in primary and secondary education.
Aurelija Novelskaite, PhD – Vilnius University, Lithuania. An associate professor and senior researcher of Kaunas Faculty and Faculty of Communication. She teaches gender studies and research methods courses. She has been involved in gender (equality) issues in academia since beginning of 2000, starting with PhD theses on women’s involvement in science in Lithuania. Later, she had been exploring the topic and implementing practical initiatives in the field is frameworks of several EC FP, H2020, and other international and national projects. Currently she is national team leader in H2020 project SPEAR, which is aimed at implementation of GEP. Also she is a member of the research ethics commission at the Research Council of Lithuania, member of the Research Ethics Compliance Committee at the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, member of Commission on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men at Ministry of Social Security and Labour, etc.