COST Voices Action Capacity BuildingSymposium for Early Career Researchers

Briefly about COST Action Voices. 

Over the last decades, European higher education and research systems have been characterized by deep changes, due to globalization and marketization, that have dramatically transformed research careers. While doctoral and postdoctoral researchers constitute a fast-growing workforce, their working conditions have become increasingly precarious and their career prospects uncertain. Those processes tend to exacerbate and create new forms of gendered inequalities for Early Career Researchers (ECRs), first and foremost women. Those inequalities are also reinforced by disparities within academia linked to other social determinants, such as origin, socioeconomic status, sexuality or ability. 

However, current institutional Research & Innovation (R&I) policies, including gender equality policies, rarely consider ECRs’ specific challenges. Moreover, implementing efficient and impactful policies that promote sustainable gender equality remains a great challenge throughout R&I institutions.

The main goal of COST Action „Making Early Career Researchers’ Voices Heard for Gender Equality “(Voices) is to increase visibility of inequalities faced by ECRs from a gender perspective and to promote a sustainable dialogue between ECRs and stakeholders in the research ecosystem at the systemic and institutional levels by creating a community of gender equality practitioners composed of various stakeholders (ECRs, independent researchers, academic managers, organizations) across Europe. 

The “COST Voices Action Capacity Building Symposium for Early Career Researchers” aims to present the Voices Action Results and Recommendations to the European Commission and the European Parliament and to engage participants in discussions about the ERC situation in the Baltic States. The event, which will be attended by representatives of young researchers and stakeholders from all Baltic States, will be hybrid. Therefore, accessible to all interested in this topic. It will feature presentations by representatives of COST Voices Working groups from abroad and the Baltic States. 

Organizing Committee:

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dalia Šatkovskiene

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Anne-Sophie Godfroy

Assoc. Prof. Sandra Pralgauskaitė