SEFI@work | From Data to Action: Building More Inclusive Conferences

🗓️ 19 February 2026
⏰ 14:00–15:00 CET
📍Register here

Academic conferences such as the SEFI Annual Conference are an integral activity for those involved in engineering education and play a key role in promoting scholarly discourse, networking and collaboration, as well as increasing the visibility of research findings. Attending conferences can therefore have a significant impact on career progression. This is particularly true of developing fields such as engineering education research (EER), where conferences play an important role in capacity building and in providing a community, especially for those who lack a national network or institutional support. Professional societies that host and run conferences thus have a powerful role in both supporting the career advancement of their members and promoting inclusive cultures. Such work necessitates a nuanced understanding of the specific factors that limit attendance at, and participation in, specific academic conferences.

This SEFI@work will provide insights into a study conducted to understand the degree to which identities and lived experiences are supported (or not) by the current SEFI conference structures and processes, specific barriers (i.e. structural, procedural, cultural, or interpersonal obstacles) that people face to participating in the event, and how the community perceive efforts to increase inclusion and belonging. 

We will reflect on the implementation of inclusion initiatives at SEFI 2024 Annual Conference, provide recommendations for organising international conferences to support inclusion and invite you to provide further ideas and thoughts about the further work needed to ensure the sustainability and continuity of efforts to increase diversity, inclusion and equity within the SEFI community.

Read the paper here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03043797.2025.2601245#abstract

This SEFI@work is brought to you by the SEFI Special Interest Group on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Speakers:

• Joelyn de Lima, Teaching Support Centre, EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Siara Isaac, Teaching Support Centre, EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Natalie Wint, Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP), University College London (UCL),London, United Kingdom
• Inês Direito, Centre for Mechanical Technology and Automation (TEMA), University of Aveiro, Aveiro,Portugal; d Centre for Engineering Education (CEE), University College London, London, United Kingdom