Gender Equality and Diversity in Higher Education Conference 2025

Call for Contributions

We are pleased to disseminate the call to the 1st 'Gender Equality and Diversity in Higher Education' conference to be held on Thursday, 12th June 2025 in the Craig Suite on the 7th floor of Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen. The aim of this conference is to equip us with the knowledge on projects related to gender equality and diversity in Higher Education (HE) produced by academic authors and researchers, as well as non-academic practitioners. We welcome contributions towards shifting our understanding and advancing method, theory and application across and within disciplines. 

This conference will be open to academics and practitioners interested in gender equality and diversity in the context of the HE sector, in general, and Business Schools, in particular. Gender equality and diversity is inherently an interdisciplinary issue because it intersects with numerous societal, economic and cultural aspects and requires insights and innovative solutions from a wide range of academic disciplines, including arts and humanities, as well as science and technology and practical fields. Therefore, this conference will involve academics in different areas of the business school (e.g. accounting, finance, economics and management) AND other disciplines (e.g. schools of education, social sciences and law, as well as STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine). The conference will also be of interest to HE practitioners and/or administrative members of staff involved with accreditations, rankings and awards for business schools and the HE sector in general, as these can have a key influence on diversity actions.

The idea is to bring together academics and practitioners to discuss solutions to the gender equality and diversity in HE. In particular, we intend to provide an environment to advance our knowledge on how regulators, accreditation/funding bodies and HE institutions can be more responsible and engaging with matters, such as gender equality and diversity considerations in leave, pay, promotions and leadership. We welcome participation and inputs from interdisciplinary research and reflections that have an impact on HE and offer long term alternative solutions. 

Examples of topics of interest

• Athena SWAN and Advance HE initiatives on gender equality and diversity
• The impact of accreditations, awards and rankings on gender equality and diversity
• Promoting gender equality and diversity in funding applications
• Gender Pay Gap
• Maternity and paternity Leave
• Childcare and carrying responsibilities
• Intersectionality in HE
• Women in leadership
• Women’s career progression
• Promotion processes
• Inequalities in education (e.g. STEMM and other areas)
• Gender equality and diversity in the curriculum
• Issues on research integrity (e.g. citations and first authorship)

Submission

Submissions are in the format of a short report. We welcome short reports with different levels of development, from an initial/proposal stage to final stage. Submissions should include:

• A short report of your research (e.g. 500 – 1000 words);
• ‘Why’ you do research, ‘why’ it matters in a bigger ‘wide world’ context;
• ‘Who’ you are engaging with (or would like to engage with) and/or ‘who’ your research is benefiting;
• ‘How’ your research is making (or can make) a difference and its significance (whether it is meaningful or beneficial, and how) to interested groups (diversity of relevant individuals, wide demographic, systems or organisations and/or geographic reach).

Submissions will be selected according to the quality of the work as well as the relation of topic to that of gender equality and diversity in higher education. 

Submission timeline

• No later than 15th April 2025
• Submissions must be made via email to: gedconference@abdn.ac.uk
• Notification of acceptance by 30th April 2025

Acknowledgement: We are grateful for the funding we have received from the University of Aberdeen Business School to run this conference. We also deeply acknowledge and appreciate the insightful guidance and exceptional support provided by Prof Stephanie Morgan, to organise this conference.