11355: Communities of Change: Organising for Intersectional Gender Equality in Academia

Sunday, July 27, 2025

14:30 - 16:30 CEST (GMT+2)

Location: Bella Center: Hall A- A1-m1

Session Type: PDW (workshop)
Orientation: Practice,Diversity
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/RxzAnX

Organizer(s)

PC

Paola Chaves

Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
YB

Yvonne Benschop

Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands

Discussant(s)

SN

Stella M. Nkomo

University of Pretoria, South Africa
PZ

Patrizia Zanoni

Hasselt U., Belgium
AK

Alex Klinge

Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Facilitator(s)

IB

Inge Bleijenbergh

Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
MD

Maria Dockweiler

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

This is a PDW on how to produce sustainable change for equality and justice in academia and beyond. This workshop takes the concept of Communities of Change for Intersectional Gender Equality within academia as a starting point, referring to a diverse group of individuals committed to fostering inclusion and equality within their organisations. These communities are organised around and actively promote values such as solidarity, reciprocity, care, trust, belonging, epistemic inclusion, justice, democracy, and anti-racist, decolonial perspectives, particularly within academia. These values give the organising process a strong and long-lasting sense of direction and help for resilience during changes in leadership, national policies and other uncertain situations. The communities of change challenge the idea of individual change agents as the main promotors of change in organisations and promote that sustainable change requires ample support from a well-organised group of people inside the organisations. In the Communities of Change, change agents carry the responsibility together and share the emotional and socio-political costs of the equality work, collectively muster energy and resources and collaborate to make change sustainable over time. The workshop aims to understand better which elements and processes need to exist in academic organisations to create and promote Communities of Change and which collective initiatives are already in place that could be examples of Communities of Change.