The present guidelines help us bring our Diversity commitment to life. They translate our values and objectives into strategies, in every process of our work and through all parts of SCRIPTS’ complex structure. We want to engage in productive dialogues to address any hurdles and encourage specific feedback to develop tailored support, including checklists, best practices, databases, and tools.

Recruitment and Representation

Equitable recruitment practices are pivotal for exercising change. We have reached an equal representation of women in all status groups and seek to solidify this state. In addition, we strive for a similarly significant participation of scholars representing perspectives from outside the transatlantic region.

Organizers of workshops and conferences strive for panels where a variety of perspectives is represented. This goes beyond gender parity, which is assumed as de rigueur. In order to create a positive, encompassing atmosphere that includes diverse perspectives, it is key that panelists from different world regions as well as junior researchers are adequately included, and different positions on the panel subject should be represented.

Any governance body shall reflect the reality of society. At least half of the members of SCRIPTS’ decision-making bodies should identify as female, and people and perspectives underrepresented in academia should be included. In particular, the regional, epistemological, and theoretical plurality of the SCRIPTS’ group of Principal Investigators should be represented.

Awareness Raising

By signaling awareness of concepts such as diversity, inclusion, equity, anti-discrimination and reflexivity in our application calls, we increase the pool of people we address. This creates an atmosphere, where every member recognizes the significance of their perspective and unique identity.

Events, workshops, and coachings serve as spaces - physically, virtually, or metaphorically - for addressing the how-to of diversity within SCRIPTS. Recognizing the omnipresence of unconscious biases, we organize these spaces to facilitate exchange and feedback on specific developments at SCRIPTS. We aim at making inclusion a given, thereby reducing barriers, and promoting diversity.

Language serves as a powerful tool and a key indicator for sensitivity and awareness in both the internal and external communication at SCRIPTS. We consistently assess communication channels, such as panels/events, statistics/data management, calls for applications, publications, etc. to ensure they align with our values, with a focus on promoting inclusive language.