Equal Opportunities & Diversity

Equal Opportunities

Gender equality and the compatibility of family and work are key functions for all institutions involved in the CRC, supported by sustainable policy measures. The CRC is committed to gender equality and family–friendly working conditions on all levels of employment and seeks to advance these central issues of concern. This includes measures aiming to increase the number of women in the sciences on all levels of qualification including senior posts, as well as creating family-friendly environments to ensure the compatibility of a scientific career and family life and responsibilities.

The following measures for the promotion of women and the reconciliation of scientific careers and family life are offered:

• Individual coaching for early-career women scientists
• Workshops on professional voice and speech training and other demand-oriented workshops for women researchers working on their doctoral thesis or postdoctoral dissertation
• “More space for me” Coaching for PhD candidates in difficult life situations
• Annual consultations on career planning and progress for all project members
• Customised solutions for child care during off-hours or in the context of meetings, conferences and workshops organized by the CRC
• Parent-child room located on the premises of the CRC
• Establishment of home workplaces
• Selective support by student assistants or financing of transcription services

Activities so far:

• Workshop “Speaking impulses for more presence in scientific contexts: From idea to voice to expression”, December 2024.
• Workshop “Empowerment in Conflicts at work”, June 2024
• Workshop “Breathing, voice and speech training workshop for female doctoral students”, June 2023.
• Workshop “Creating Inclusive Workplaces: Discrimination and Bias at Work”, April 2023.
• “Empowered” – Postdoc & Graduate Workshop, April 2023.
• Workshop & Individual Coaching: “Breath, Voice and Speech for Women”, December 2022.
• Workshop “Empowered”, November 2022.
• Workshop “Doctorate – and then? Profiling for the job market”, November 2021.
• Group coaching “Self-positioning and career planning”, January 28, 2020.
• Individual Coaching “Female Scientist Empowerment”, since 2020.
• Group coaching: for young female scientists, November, 2019
• “Fireside Evening (without fireplace)” – Internal meeting of the female scientists of the CRC 1265, July 2019.
• Individual coaching for female junior scientists II, May 2019.
• Individual coaching for junior female scientists I, December 2018.
• Voice and speech training for young female scientists, November 2018.

Contact person for questions regarding the equal opportunity program of the SFB 1265: Dr. Nina Elsemann

Equal opportunity representatives of the research associates: 

Linda Hering
Margherita Tess
Christy Kulz

Diversity

The CRC 1265 strives to promote careers in the context of diversity –in terms of equal opportunities, as an inclusion policy, and as an approach to equity. We see the creation of a respectful, non-discriminatory and inclusive work environment as a shared responsibility. In addition, CRC-internal events and trainings on diversity-sensitive organizational development and science facilitate a concrete engagement with the implications of various social dimensions of discrimination for our actions and research. The CRC also strives to offer different forms of participation and co-determination (e.g. ad-hoc groups, mentoring formats, elected representation). Since 2023, a cross-status group has been working on an expanded diversity policy in a collaborative and ongoing process to further strengthen the CRC’s structures and procedures around the principles of non-discrimination, inclusion, and equity.

The CRC addresses issues of diversity and plurality not only at the organizational level, but also in terms of research practices, content, and theory. Therefore, we regularly organize events that aim to decenter research perspectives and multiply our points of observation. These events also provide a platform for intensive dialogue and exchange with researchers from different research contexts.

Past events (excerpt):

• Online Lectures “Decolonizing Spatial Theory” (as part of the digital lecture series “Space Talks”), January 2025.
  — Fabio Santos (FU Berlin/University of Copenhagen) “Offshoring Refugee Detention: Migration, Empire, and the Zone of Nonbeing”
  — Dhiren Borisa (O.P. Jindal Global University) “Storying Spaces of Hope and Freedom: Mapping Dalit and Queer Imaginings from India”
• Workshop “Gender Diversity Sensibilization”, November 2024.
• Workshop “Active Allyship for Researchers”, July 2024.
• Fireside Evening – “Intersectionality & Positionality in the Field”, April 2024.
• Conference –“Confronting European Pasts in the Present”, November 9/10., 2023.
• Plenary session “Intersectionality, diversity and inclusion strategies in the CRC”, July 2023.
• Jamie Hakim “Safer Space and Queer Nightlife. The politics of vulnerability and control in ‘post-neoliberal’ London”, June 2023.
• Plenary session “The Dialectics of Digital Communication and Physical Place in ‘Safer Spaces’”, January 2023.
• International Conference “My city is a battleground: Intersectionality and Urban Violence”, October 20/21, 2022.
• Monika Wohlrab-Sahr “Multiple Secularities or: Approaching cross-cultural and cross-epoch comparisons in a globally entangled world”, July 2022.
• Noa K. Ha “Race, Racism and Critical Whiteness”, May 2022.
• Maureen Maisha Auma “Berlin mehrheimisch. Rassismuskritische (Wissens-) Räume postmigrantisch, dekolonial und anerkennungsstrategisch zusammengedacht”, December 2021.

Contact person for questions regarding the diversity program of the CRC 1265: Lucie Bernroider