Advancing Diversity and Inclusion within the Europlanet Community

The Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure and Europlanet Society aim to build a diverse and inclusive European – and global – network to support planetary science and industry.

The Europlanet Diversity Committee acts as a strategic task force to advise, coordinate and champion activities across the Europlanet Society that further the Society’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusivity.

Europlanet’s activities aim to facilitate cooperation with individuals and institutions from under-represented countries and to raise awareness of the issues they face. However, the global challenges of the last few years have been felt throughout the planetary community, with under-represented groups often most affected. Networking opportunities have been disrupted, resources have dwindled and motivation is low.

With increasing concerns about the environmental impact of conferences, and the transition to hybrid meetings still a work in progress, new solutions for effective networking need to be found. While virtual/hybrid access can lower barriers to participation in some areas (e.g. cost and travel), there are also risks of two-tier systems developing, with the most under-represented becoming even more disadvantaged.

In this work, we will discuss diversity and inclusion initiatives carried out by Europlanet Society since its foundation in 2018. We will moreover investigate geographical participation trends for major European geoscience and planetology conferences, with the aim of better understanding the situation and identifying appropriate responses.

Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.