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Center of Excellence Women and Science

ENCOUWOMSCI

ENCOUWOMSCI – Encouragement to Advance - Training Seminars for Women Scientists

Project duration: 01.10.2006 - 31.12.2008

Project lead: Isabel Kassel, Dr. Anke Lipinsky

Research team: Dr. Anke Lipinsky, Silke Tölle

The main objectives of the EU-project “Encouragement to Advance – Training Seminars for Women Scientists” (ENCOUWOMSCI) included promoting the representation of women scientists in leading positions in science and research, increasing the number of female professorships and enhancing mobility in the European Research Area, facilitating successful networking and deepening of knowledge about European research policy and funding. The project was coordinated by CEWS and funded through the 6th European Research Framework Program.

ENCOUWOMSCI offered professional application and appointment training for women scientists holding their PhD for at least four years and striving for a professorship in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria or Switzerland. 112 women participated in one of twelve, four-day-long training seminars held in Brussels between April 2007 and April 2008. Experts and professional trainers informed attendees about appointment procedures in the target countries, different scientific cultural communities, the optimal design for application documents and how to conduct interviews with appointment committees. The third and fourth days of the seminars were dedicated to the European dimension with introductions into funding in the European Union, European research policy and the European Platform of Women Scientists EPWS. One of the objectives was to encourage mobility by disseminating and generating knowledge on the European Research Area to increase networking, thereby reducing boundaries in applying for professorships in different countries.

In June 2008, a final conference was held in cooperation with the EU-project “Advanced Training for Women in Scientific Research” (ADVANCE, coordinated at Danube University Krems, Austria). The conference “Supporting Women in Scientific Careers” presented experiences and results of both projects and invited experts from several European countries to give keynotes on the situation of women scientists in the European Research Area. Gathering researchers, project and funding managers, representatives of national and international research and science administrators, options and prospects of career supportive projects were discussed in round tables and an expert talk.
To maintain networking, all participants of ENCOUWOMSCI were invited to an internal networking event in November 2008 in Brussels, which served as a platform and marketplace for exchange and support. An informal network and ideas for interdisciplinary and cross-national cooperation were initiated to help ensure and maintain contact among the participants after the end of the project.

The project was continuously evaluated; results of the evaluation were published in 2009 together with the general concept and the training concept of ENCOUWOMSCI and gathering articles on different EU-projects on supporting female post-docs in the European Research Area.

Funded by: