Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at EPSC2021

Lecturers without borders (diversity lecture by Athanasia Nikolaou)

Thursday Sep 16th | 9:50-10:20 CEST

This lecture by Athanasia Nikolaou, organised by the Europlanet Diversity Committee, will be an opportunity to hear the speaker’s story about the initiative ‘Lecturers without borders’ to make planetary sciences more accessible to the wider society.
Description extracted from https://lewibo.org/:
“Lecturers without borders is a project launched by a group of international scientists. The headquarters of the project are in Paris and Munich. The creators of the project are scientists and university and school professors who use their travel opportunities (when attending scientific conferences, going on holidays, etc.) to give free outreach-lectures in local schools and universities. The main target is to inspire the high school students and to raise their motivation in learning science. As of today the project has already over 190 lecturers and can approach up to 8 000 schools in Europe and Asia.”

Short Course: Bystander Intervention Training

Thursday Sep 16th | 17:30-19:30 CEST

How do we deal with situations or comments that we know aren’t right? How should we react to jokes that are harmful instead of funny, to gossiping or other harassing behaviour? When does an intervention help and how do we best interrupt inappropriate behaviour?
This short course offered by Dr. Moses Milazzo will provide participants with tools and skills to help to step up, safely intervene in potentially harmful situations, and start (or continue) difficult conversations about situations or behaviours that are harmful to individuals or to a team as a whole.
No previous registration for the short course is needed, and a link to the short course will be provided here shortly before the start of the short course.

Introduction: Wiki-Edit-A-Thon

Friday Sep 17th | 17:30-19:00 CEST

The Diversity Committee of the Europlanet Society, in collaboration with Women in Red and WikiDonne, are organizing a second edition of the EPSC Edit-A-Thon that was first held during EPSC2020 to continue to highlight diversity within the planetary science community. The Wiki-Edit-A-Thon will start with a general introduction course on Friday 17th 5:30pm, which will be organized as a Zoom Meeting and will be recorded for public release after the meeting. Throughout EPSC2021, there will be follow-up meetings to meet and work together on new Wikipedia articles or translations of articles on planetary scientists from underrepresented communities (female researchers, scientists of color, etc.).

Follow-up editing sessions are scheduled as follows (given for CEST):

Monday Sep 20th 19:00-20:30
Tuesday Sep 21st 12:00-13:00
Wednesday Sep 22nd 16:15-17:30
Thursday Sep 23rd 12:00-13:30
Friday Sep 24th 17:30-19:00

Diversity and Inclusiveness in Planetary Sciences

Tuesday Sep 21st | 14:20–14:50 CEST

The benefits of diversity and inclusiveness in the scientific community are incontrovertible. Following the success of previous years, this session aims to foster debate within the planetary sciences community about the reasons behind under-representation of different groups (gender, cultural, ethnic origin and national) and best practices to make the research environment more inclusive identifying and addressing barriers to equality.

We invite abstracts focusing on: under-representation (gender, cultural, ethnic origin and nationality biases) supported by statistics and data; outreach and education activities to reach broad and diverse audiences, best practices to support inclusiveness; and case studies on mentoring and bias-concerned activities. Data and initiatives related to COVID are strongly encouraged.

‘Can we talk?’ Difficult Conversations with Underrepresented People of Color

Tuesday Sep 21st | 18.00-20.00 CEST

Join us for a screening of the film series “Can we talk?” by Dr. Kendall Moore, which focuses on the issue of ‘social belonging’ in the context of STEM and the effect it has on the lives of underrepresented people of color. In a follow-up discussion, we will talk about the barriers that those from minority backgrounds still encounter when entering the Planetary Science community, and explore ways in which institutions and individual researchers can change this reality. These difficult conversations must be conducted now in order to make our field as welcoming and diverse as it can be.

Diversity and Inclusiveness – Europlanet Round Table

Thursday Sep 23rd | 18.00-20.00 CEST

Please join us for this networking event to discuss diversity and inclusiveness in the planetary science community. The meeting is organized by the Europlanet Diversity Committee. Everyone interested in this topic is welcome to attend.