Dagmar Höppel holds a degree in economics and a Ph.D. in Social Science. She was the head of the Office of the Conference for Gender Equality in Higher Education (LaKoG) for the State of Baden-Württemberg at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Since 1996 she is active in several regional and national committees for equality in higher education. She developed the concept for several (funding) programs that support women in higher education, which were implemented by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts in Baden-Württemberg. MuT-Mentoring and Training – her Mentoring-Program – was founding-member in the EU-funded Eument-Net-Project and also founding member of Eument-Net-Association. She is still active in diffent boards and associations.

Contact:
Dr. Dagmar Höppel

Member of the eument-net Executive Board
Head of the kite-mentoring program,  University of Freiburg, Germany
Associate Professor, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine (USAMV), Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Evelyn Ruşdea is a distinguished scientist, project manager and mentoring coordinator with extensive expertise in both academic research and career development. Originally from Romania, Evelyn earned her degree in biology from Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca before pursuing her PhD at the University of Münster, Germany. Following her doctoral studies, she joined the Institute for Landscape Management at the University of Freiburg, Germany, where she has made significant contributions in the fields of land use, landscape development, and monitoring of biotopes and species.

Her dedication to advancing women in natural and life sciences is evident through her leadership of the kite-mentoring program at the University of Freiburg since 2013. Under her guidance, this program has grown into a thriving network of more than 300 participants, empowering women to achieve their personal and career goals. Evelyn has been an active mentor for women in various initiatives for over 15 years and has been an integral part of the eument-net since 2017. As part of the organizing committee of this conference in Constanta, Evelyn sees this event as a pivotal opportunity to establish a long lasting network for mentoring programs at Romanian universities, paving the way for women to empower their academic and research careers.

Alexandru Dinu is Project Expert at The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI), a public body of the Central Administration under the ultimate authority of the Ministry of National Education (MEN) in Romania. The mission of UEFISCDI is to promote quality and leadership for higher education,research, development and innovation.

Alexandru Dinu has been involved in implementing projects funded by national and European sources, focusing on innovation and gender equality in research. He was responsible for developing and implementing the Gender Equality Plan (GEP) at UEFISCDI (www.gep.uefiscdi.ro) within the CALIPER project(www.caliper-project.eu) . This involved coordinating the GEP and contributing to knowledge transfer beyond academia.

Within the Genderactionplus project (www.genderaction.eu), he led the capacity-building work package focused on gender equality in research for consortium partners.

In Accelerate Romania project (www.accelerate.gov.ro) he contributed to analyzing the current state of the Romanian innovation entrepreneurial ecosystem. He examined best practice models from similar platforms in Europe and worldwide, developed the Accelerate Romania platform concept, collected and processed data, and maintained the platform with updated information.

He is currently enrolled in PhD in Management in National School of Political Studies and Public Administration in Romania (since 2023) wit the thesis: „Promoting Inclusive Research: Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, Responsible Management, and Intersectional Perspectives“. He graduated the Master studies in Political Communication and Political Journalism at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences, University of Bucharest, Romania ( 2020 – 2023) with Master Thesis: „Sexual Education: A Battleground in Anti-Gender Campaigns in Romania“.

Kateřina Svíčková has more than 15 years of experience in the European Commission where she has worked on policy development, implementation, analysis and design in various areas such as security, knowledge for policy, rule of law and gender equality. In her current role as Head of Sector for Gender in the Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation, she steers the development and implementation of policies aiming to achieve gender equality in research and innovation in the European Research Area.

European Commission: Head of Sector – Gender

DG Research & Innovation / Unit Democracy, Equality & Culture

is the President of the National Council for Combating Discrimination from Romania since 2002 where he takes care of the legal representation of the Council, analyzes petitions and complaints and adopts the necessary measures. He is a Hungarian lawyer and politician from Romania in the position of State Counsellor in Vice Prime Minister’s Cabinet in Romanian Government dealing with legal advice, prevention and combating discrimination and protection of national minorities. He has a PhD title of Doctor in the legal regime of citizenship in public international law at University of Bucharest, Faculty of Law.

Head of mentoring programs for women in science

Chair of European Mentoring Network eument-net

Ekaterina Masetkina M.A. is passionate about empowering of female early career researchers and is in charge of several mentoring programs for women in science at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf (HHUD). Under her supervision, four various mentoring groups for different academic target groups are regularly running at HHUD: for female doctoral researchers, for medical interns and for advanced postdocs in German language and a special group for international doctoral and early career postdocs Women in Science & Society (WISS) in English language: https://mentoring.hhu.de/en

Ekaterina has a Master of Arts in European Culture and Economy and works in the Central Gender Equality Office of HHUD. She is keen on improving the gender balance at her university and is involved in events enhancing visibility of female researchers. Ekaterina evaluates the mentoring programs and participates systematically at the international conferences on gender equality in high education. Ekaterina is a regular member of the German professional association Forum Mentoring in Science and Gender Consulting Network. Since 2019, Ekaterina has been acting as a chairperson of the professional network of mentoring coordinators eument-net (European Network of Mentoring Programs for the Advancement of Equal Opportunities and Cultural and Institutional Change in Academia and Research https://www.eument-net.eu/).

Central Gender Equality Office of Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf

University Str. 1, 40225 Dusseldorf, Germany

Title: So that priorities don’t just remain on paper: Institutional challenges for the establishment, development and sustainability of mentoring programmes – Czech case

Kateřina Cidlinská, Ph.D. is a researcher in the field of sociology, higher education studies and gender studies. Her research topics are working conditions in academia, academic careers, exits from academic career, gender inequalities in academia and professional identities. She founded and coordinated mentoring program for early-career researchers, presided EUMENT-NET and Czech PhD Students Association. Currently, she provides consultancy services for research and academic institutions in the field of mentoring and support of professional development of early-career researchers.

Title: Meeting the Challenges and Providing the Winning Strategies for Structural Change for Gender Equality

Eileen Drew is the former Director of the Trinity Centre for Gender Equality and Leadership at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland where she lectured in the School of Computer Science and Statistics and the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies. Her research interests are: gender and the labour market, equality and diversity, work/life balance, family leave policies and gender in entrepreneurship and academic leadership.    Professor Drew played an instrumental role in driving the Athena SWAN initiative in Trinity College, following the successful completion of the INstitutional Transformation for Effecting Gender Equality (INTEGER) Project in June 2015. She was Coordinator of the Systemic Action for Gender Equality (SAGE) Horizon 2020 Project, 2016-2019. She is the author of numerous academic works. Her latest book The Gender Sensitive University: A contradiction in terms was published by Routledge in 2021.

Harrasment in higher education: an endemic problem?

As a graduate of the Babes Bolyai Faculty of Law in Cluj Napoca, Claudia Cristina Berghezan-Gyarmath holds a PhD in Law, Faculty of Law from the University of Salamanca, Spain, with the theme The principle of equality and non-discrimination in labor law in the European Union.

Currently she holds the leadership and coordination of the Professional Association of Experts in Equal Oportunities in Romania and she is a Trainer of the course Expert in Equal Opportunities.

Through her activity as a Counselor in Equal Opportunities and Psychological Harassment at Work she promotes a positive policy that inspires and supports both the organizations/ institutions and the employees/students/teachers in developing a common source of productivity based on equality, tolerance or any form of discrimination or violence and diversity.

With a great power of adaptation, she can easily face different challenges, accumulating during the years of work and research.Testimony is her research work, found both in her book published in Salamanca, Spain, entitled The Treaty of Amsterdam and equal opportunities in the labor market in the European Union, and in articles written in the field of equality and non-discrimination.

She strongly believes in creating a management system based on tolerance, respect, diversity and the inclusion of all internal and external factors, which, implemented with positive information and education measures can increase the level of performance of any organization/ university/ institution.

Ramona MIHAILA is the Head of the Secretary of State’s Office at the National Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men, within the Ministry of Family, Youth, and Equal Opportunities, Romanian Government. She is also professor Ph.D. at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University, Bucharest, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on women’s writing, gender studies, literature, urban cultures.

She is the author and (co)-editor of 25 books concerning women’s writing, gender studies, narrative strategies. She has attended over 250 conferences and published the delivered articles in international data bases indexed journals.

She has been visiting professor at Arizona State University, research fellow for international institutions: Library of Congress, Washington, Chawton House Library and University of Southampton, Huygens Royal Institute, The Hague, National Library of Vienna, and grants recipient for conference participations.

Besides being a EURAXESS Expert (European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers) and evaluator on gender studies for European Commission, Brussels, Ramona Mihaila has been coordinator and member of European projects on gender studies, women’s writing, literary urban places, social placemaking.

She serves as the executive publishing editor of Journal of Research in Gender Studies, Addleton Academic Publishers, New York.