Genie seminar with Bri Gauger and Kai Lo Andersson

Programme:

09.00-09.20 Welcome and introduction by Maria Elmquist, Deputy President with responsibility for leadership and equality
09.20-10.20 Presentation by Bri Gauger, winner of Chalmers Equality Award 2024
10.20-10.50 Fika break for mingle, discussions and coffee
10.50-11.50 Presentation by Kai Lo Andersson, Genie shadowing PhD student
11.50-12.00 Conclusion and questions, moderated by Maria Elmquist

Invited speakers are Bri Gauger, winner of Chalmers Equality Award 2024, and Kai Lo Andersson, Genie shadowing PhD student:

Valuable Labour: Assessing Academic Citizenship
Bri Gauger, PhD, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering (ACE)

In 2022, Chalmers added ”academic citizenship” as an assessment category in the Arbetsordning (Rules of Procedure) in 2022. Collegial activities are often undervalued in academia, but what counts as academic citizenship? What tasks are being performed, and what are the tradeoffs involved in participating? In this talk, Bri shares the results of the study for which she was awarded the 2024 Chalmers Equality Award. Relying on in-depth interviews and workshops conducted in three Chalmers departments, her research reveals a broad spectrum of hidden academic citizenship tasks which often take time from activities that are highly valued in career advancement. With these tradeoffs in mind, she will share takeaways from the “academic citizenship recognition strategy” piloted at ACE in 2024. She argues that while academic citizenship is often treated as a supplementary dimension of academic labour, it instead foregrounds structural and cultural conditions that shape the everyday realities of academic employees. Finally, she reflects on the unique challenges faced by middle managers tasked with promoting the value of academic citizenship at the university.

How do engineers do gender equality work? Policy suggestions and ways forward
Kai Lo Andersson, PhD, Department of Technology Management and Economics (TME)

Based on my thesis, Engineering Gender Equality, I invite you to discuss policies and practices that could enhance Chalmers’ work for gender equality, equity and increased diversity. I will give an overview of my research and suggestions for improvements before we discuss further.

This thesis studies gender equality work for faculty in technical universities. The first objective is to investigate what changes and what work are considered legible in the context of gender equality in a STEM institution. The second objective is to explore the subtle inclusion and exclusion methods that hinder gender equality work in this context. These objectives are explored through a case study of a gender equality project in a Swedish technical university and interviews with gender equality and diversity workers in Scandinavia. Following the processes of such a project contributes both practical and theoretical insights into how gender equality work is performed.