Meet the ATHENA Advisory Board!

Independent experts have been and are commonly invited to take part in the advisory structures within research and innovation programmes of the European Union (EU). This practice has become quite common as their expertise and knowledge provide a highly valuable asset.

In the context of an H2020 project, a group of external experts might join an Advisory Board (AB) panel to participate in the integration of project-related activities and provide external feedback on its progress and results. The involvement of external experts extends the project network and provides valuable input to the project partners.

ATHENA’s AB is composed of eight members of national authorities representing the ATHENA countries and two representatives of scientific publishers. The AB performs various tasks, such as:

• Providing non-binding strategic advice to the ATHENA consortium on the design, implementation and monitoring of the Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) and concerning the networking and engagement activities;
• Reviewing the project outputs and progress of all the activities on an annual basis, ensuring that the GEPs are following national and EU advancements;
• Providing specific advice to the consortium for the capacity-building activities to the members of the Gender Equality Plans Implementation (GEPI) Committees;
• Attending one project meeting per year.

ATHENA’s AB is composed of ten professionals with expertise on gender and women’s studies, but also on relevant areas for gender equality, such as education, research and labour:

The first AB meeting was held in the framework of the ATHENA International Conference ‘Looking towards gender equality in research and innovation’, which took place last February 10^th at the Elder Museum in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain). The AB members met privately to have an internal discussion on the project advance and results and to provide a series of recommendations for institutional transformation and GEPs development and implementation.

The experts suggested measures for better monitoring of the GEPs and highlighted that certain topics should be considered a key aspect of the GEPs, such as the balance between personal and professional life.