The network remained stable this year with the usual monthy meetings for link convenors. The most significant new development this year were the awarding of a Network Grant by EERA to Victoria Showumni and Colleagues to pursue a project that will ultimately lead to our network, and the wider ECER community being better able to support ethnic minority postgraduate students. The special issue regarding Intersectionality and Education being edited by the network link and co-link convenors (Victoria Showumni, Branislava Baronivic and Andrea Abbas) is slowly working its way through the reviewing process. These papers were originally conceived of when we had a Special Network Call for papers on intersectionality and Education.
At the conference, Network 33 members designed and ran a Tuesday Workshop which was attended and enthusiastically participated in by 10 participants. We put out a special call for papers regarding the challenges associated with conceptualising and researching more diverse intersecting gender inequalities in the context of the challenges raised by changing and vairied forms of genders being acknowledged in some countries across Europe. The responses were extremely interesting and made exciting contributions to 3 paper sessions. I hope this debate will carry on and inspire future papers.
One of the highlights is always the presentations of emerging researchers attending ECER and giving their first paper. Andrea Abbas chaired a session on gender in the Emerging Researchers Conference. It was a really high standard set of 4 presenations using diverse and complex social theorising and valuable data from different countries. This and the papers by emerging and early career researchers in our own network give us hope for the future of European and International gender research. In addition, it was nice to see research projects that are been influenced by feedback from Network 33 members. Monika Ryndzionek revised her project on Adult Women returned with the data from a project which will be turned into a book. Academics from 13 countries presented in our network. 43 papers (including the 6 from 2 symposia) were presented. Many represented data and co-researchers from across a much wider range of countries and they focused across the length and breadth of the education sectors (including informal education and adult education).
It is always appreciated when Network 33 members take valuable time to organise focused symposia. We had a double symposia chaired by Tamás Jules Fütty and Helene Götschel on the Politics and Experince of Queer Education. We had a disciplinary foci on STEM, pyhsical education and sex education across a number of seminars. We also had some interesting gender and leadership papers.
The minutes of the Network Meeting held in Belgrade are available on this website. Significant developments discussed were:
a) the question to whether we should change the name of the network to reflect the content of the conference programme and make it more appealing to a wider range of gender researchers. The possibility of proposing Genders, Sexualities and Intersectionalities was discussed but we did not agree or vote on any specifica title change. Members will be consulted this year by email. It was acknowledged that any attempts to change the title involve a process and may not be accepted by the wider ECER community for good reason.
b) There will be changes in the Nework Link Convenor and Deputy Link Convenor team as Andrea Abbas (who has been Deputy Link Convenor (2018-2022) and will have been Link Convenor (2023-2026) will stand down from the Convenor Team at the next ECER conference. Network Members are asked to consider whether they would be interested in being part of this link-convenor and deputy link convenor team. Please do get in touch with aa2452(at)bath.ac.uk if you are interested.
We look forward to receiving a new batch of proposals from December 2025 and seeing you at ECER in Tampere in 2026.