Summary of participants

Doctoral students

Currently there are all together 30 doctoral students who belong to the sub-groups of the network:

Denmark 7
Finland 15
Iceland 3
Norway 3
Sweden 2

The number of students who may participate the seminars and workshops will actually be somewhat bigger since the calls to the PhD workshops will be directed to all Nordic PhD students in the participating institutes, and also to potentially interested students in Baltic countries. Furthermore, the network includes several projects that are currently starting their work with the intention to recruit some new PhD students (the sub-group plans include at least two open PhD positions). Since new projects usually attract starting PhD students, it can be estimated that during the three-year period the sub-groups will recruit 4-5 new PhD students. Thus, the total number of doctoral students who are expected to attend the seminars during the tree-year period, will be around 35. In addition there may also be some participants from closely related areas of research, and from Baltic countries.

Gender equality

The Nordic Socio-Cognitive Network consists of 27 women and 47 men. The steering committee has 2 female and 5 male members. Among PhD-students associated with the Network, 14 are women and 16 are men. Among post-docs 6 are women and 7 are men, but among senior scholars 7 are women and 24 men.

These figures suggest that the make up of the Network resembles the general gender make up of Nordic Academia. Statistics show that Nordic academic life is not balanced from a gender perspective, since most of the permanent university positions are still occupied by men. On the other hand, there is a growing number of female researchers among post-docs and doctoral students. However, current research has pointed out that a high percentage of women in PhD and post-doc positions does not automatically lead to a growing level of women in permanent positions. This is a challenge we are aware of, and a challenge we will address actively:

One member of the steering group, Liv Ingeborg Lied, is responsible for maintaining equal participation of men and women throughout the project period
Key note lecturers should be both women and men. Both women and men should be organizers and participants at the 6 research seminars.
In conjunction with each of the research seminars, the steering committee will arrange career-sessions for PhD-students and other junior scholars. These sessions will focus on planning and facilitating for a research career in the field, with a special eye to the intermediate period between PhD/Post-doc and employment in permanent positions.

It should also be stressed that participation in network activity is an excellent opportunity for women scholars to develop their own personal networks, as well as to acquire skills necessary for future employment in an academic profession.