Gendered academia : Inequality and inclusiveness in changing Italian academic governance

Maria Carmela Agodi, a Professor of Sociology and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Ph.D. Program in Mind, Gender, and Languages at the University of Napoli Federico II (UNINA), where she teaches: Advanced Methods in Social Research; Science, Technology & Society; Social Policy. She has worked in theoretical sociology and research methodology, with particular reference to action theory and related issues. Her methodological interests are focused on the theoretical relevance of indicators, database structuration, formal models (game theory and simulation), and logically grounded models in qualitative and quantitative research, mainly qualitative comparative analysis and event structure analysis. She has been working on the relationship between informatics, sociological modeling, and simulation (also contributing with invited lectures and tutorials to the Lipari School on Computational Models of Political and Social Events). In her empirical works, she applied those theoretical and methodological approaches designing innovative mixed-methods strategies for the study of normative and law-oriented action, i.e., in bureaucratic procedures; public policies governance and implementation; the interrelations of money and the law as “generalized symbolic media” in the regulation of social systems and welfare policies. She has been researching the perspective of Science in and for Society and of Women in Science, as defined within the European FPs, including the last one, Horizon Europe. Since the beginning of her scientific career, she has been working on the epistemology of social sciences and the sociology of science and its convergence towards the interdisciplinary perspective of Science and Technology Studies STS). With the more general theoretical issues in the field, her research domains have been those of feminist STS, robotics, health technologies, antiageing medicine. She has recently (2017-2021) been coordinating the UNINA research unit of the PRIN “Social factors and processes affecting the acceptance of fake scientific knowledge.” She has been serving as an elected member of the Executive Committee of The European Sociological Association (2011-2015) and the Italian Sociological Association (2010-2016). She has been the Chair of The European Sociological Association Research Network on Women’s and Gender Studies (2011-2017). She is co-editor (with E. Annandale) of the ESA book series “Studies in European Sociology,” published by Routledge. She was International Consulting Editor of the American Sociological Review (1990-1992) and is currently on the Scientific Board of the journals: European Societies; Tecnoscienza. Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies; Quaderni di Sociologia; Rassegna Italiana di Valutazione; Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale; Sociologia Italiana. AIS Journal. She is a member of the Gender Observatory on University and Research at UNINA.  She has been the President of the Italian Sociological Association (2020-2022) and is currently the Chair of the ESA (European Sociological Association) Council of National Associations (2019-2023).

Adele Lauria is associate professor in Applied Physycs at the University of Naples Federico II. From 1999 to 2011 she carried out research activities in the field of physics applied to medicine, with particular regard to the study of different types of detectors (sylicon hybrid detector, SiPM) for applications in diagnostics and therapy. Since 2011 she has carried out research in the field of nuclear emulsion detectors, whose physical characteristics (high spatial resolution and directionality) make them optimal for certain applications in the field of medical physics.

She is one of the proposers of the FOOT experiment (funded by Istituto Nazionale Fisica Nucleare) which aims to measure the nuclear fragmentation of the target in proton therapy (100-250 MeV) and the measurement of the nuclear fragmentation of the target and the projectile in the case of heavier incident ions, such as helium, carbon and oxygen ions (energies up to 400 MeV). She is author of more than 70 international publications.

In 2017, she started to collaborate with Maria Carmela Agodi and Ilenia Picardi for the implementation of the first mentoring program in the Neapolitan athenaeum and, since 2019, she is the person in charge of activities to enhance women’s paths in university and research within the Gender Observatory on University and Research the University of Napoli.

Ilenia Picardi (PhD in Physics, PhD in Mind, Gender Language) is currently Assistant professor in Sociology at the Department of Political Science at the University of Naples Federico II. Since 2006 she has been working in the field of Science and society focusing her research activity mainly on the following themes: a) social responsibility of science and technological risk; b) science communication; c) gender in science and technology. For the University of Naples Federico II, she was project manager of the FP7 GENOVATE Project (Transforming Organizational Culture for Gender Equality in Research and Innovation, January 2013 - June 2017). Within the GENOVATE project, she designed and implemented the Gender Equality Action Plan for the Neapolitan university and was Project Coordinator for the first mentoring program for women in science within Italian universities. She is the person in charge of Science and Technology Studies within the Gender Observatory on University and Research at the Neapolitan university. In the last years, she has published several book chapters and papers in Italian and international peer-reviewed journals, and she is author of two research monographs and two science communication books. In addition to being member of national and international scientific associations, in August 2019 she was elected board member of the Regional Network on Southern European Societies (RN27) within the European Sociological Association (ESA).