IG20137 - Capacity building for the next generation of researchers and evaluators to engage in inclusive sex and gendered research (NEXT-GENDER)

During our COST action VOICES we recognized a gap in awareness and understanding of the importance of sex and gender as research variables among researchers and investigators. It has become evident that across Europe (and beyond), the academic environment does not provide sufficient education on sex-and gender-specific topics (SGT) in science and technology across fields. Given that integration of the gender dimension into research and innovation content is of paramount importance for society and growth and has thus become a requirement in research funding applications (especially in the Horizon Europe Programme), there is an urgent need to educate and train both researchers and proposal evaluators and in particular the younger generation on the importance of SGT and their integration into research. Inclusivity beyond SGT and intersectionality dimensions in research add to this urgent need, so that future research and innovation benefit everyone and especially the most vulnerable.

After conducting a successful training school during VOICES, we realised that the young research investigators (YRIs) who participated originally had almost no training in this area. Thanks to the training school, they discovered sex and gender methodologies and intersectionality and how to use them in their own research. The example of researchers who were in their field and had developed such methodologies was crucial in providing them with a practical and inspiring approach and helping them to open up new innovative research questions. Building on this experiment, we propose to replicate this experience, to create a toolkit based on it, to make all this material available online for a wider academic audience and to create communities of practice to facilitate the appropriation of SGT and inclusive methodologies.
The aim of this proposal is to develop a training programme, consisting of face-to-face workshops, CoPs and web-based toolkits, to 1) help the research community understand the importance of sex & gender as research variables and how they intersect with other variables, 2) provide guidance on how to incorporate them into research curricula, and 3) address the requirement for inclusive SGT and intersectionality dimensions in project proposals.