“Glass ceilings” and “stone floors” have become common descriptors in discussions of women’s career trajectories. Writing in 2016, Maddrell et al. note that while there has been positive action in gender equality in the academic workplace geography should not assume it has ‘tackled the “gender problem”’. While the number of women in professorial roles has increased from 4% in 1978 to 21% in 2012/13, as they note ‘respondents were acutely aware of key career transition points, and both enablers and barriers to their progression.’
Accompanying the growing number of events to support early career researchers the Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group (GFGRG) and the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) are organising an event targeted at geographers at professorial-level who are facing a series of issues and questions around the next steps in their career, perhaps including but not limited to:
- Reflecting on the different understandings of leadership
- How to manage and negotiate new research directions/ changes in research direction
- Decisions around the scale of research: to develop and manage a large research team or not?
- ‘Real-life’ accounts of university level administrative roles
- Evolving seniority in teaching roles
We are planning to hold the day long event at the RGS (Lowther Room) on June 8th, 2018 in London to discuss these and other issues. At this stage we invite expressions of interest that note up to five issues that potential attendees might find it valuable to address.
Please direct expressions of interest to Katherine Brickell (GFGRG Chair) katherine.brickell@rhul.ac.uk and Harriet Hawkins harriet.hawkins@rhul.ac.uk (SCGRG Chair) by 26th March 2018.