Project activities

Gender-based violence and institutional responses: Building a knowledge base and operational tools to make universities and research organisations safe

Gender-based violence is a complex, prevalent, persistent feature and force in many organisations, with pandemic proportions. Violence, violations and abuse may be physical, sexual, economic/financial, psychological – online or offline – and can include gender or sexual harassment. It often remains unspoken.

Universities and research organisations are not exempt from this pandemic. Specific organisational structures can even create conditions for hierarchies of power that are structured by gender and age and regularly underpin violence. While gender-based violence deeply impacts individual lives, it also has serious social, economic, and health repercussions on organisational and social levels.

Despite the scale, the political significance and the growing interest in academia, gender-based violence in research organisations remains largely under-reported and under-researched. Without sufficient knowledge, infrastructure, measures, and activities in place in academia, it is difficult to fully prevent, protect or even prosecute.

• How large is the prevalence of gender-based violence in European research performing organisations?
• How is it affected by specific organisational structures and hierarchies of power?
• Do EU States have the adequate legal or policy frameworks to bring institutional change?

Over three years, UniSAFE will provide up-to-date, robust and reliable quantitative and qualitative data on gender-based violence, including newly emerging forms of violence, in universities and research performing organisations. These results will be translated into policy recommendations and a toolbox for universities and research organisations.

https://unisafe-gbv.eu/the-project/ 

ArcInTex ETN

The ArcInTexETN training network opens up a new cross-disciplinary arena for research, education, and development projects by addressing a fundamental research challenge, i.e. experimentally exploring how new ways of more sustainable ways of living can be expressed, within a very broad cross-disciplinary context; linked together by a strong, common driving force, i.e. textile thinking for adaptation and responsiveness, the ESRs participating in the programme will receive training in the context of crossdisciplinary, cutting-edge research and access to a broad network for the development of research within the areas of the ETN.  

The consortium consists of the following six leading design schools and two companies: Royal College of Art, Heriot-Watt University, Eindhoven University of Technology, Vilnius Academy of Arts, The Berlin University of the Arts, The Swedish School of Textiles at the University of Borås, Philips Electronics Netherlands B.V. and Svensson AB. The supervisors and PhD students involved are all top-researchers from across the world with many interesting and outgoing personalities that will be interesting to follow during the project.

There are 15 PhD students within the ArcInTexETN project. During 36 months, from September 2015, their research will connect architecture and textiles through design. They will learn, develop and test new techniques and materials in order to find new insights about our future living.

www.arcintexetn.eu

www.arcintexetn.com