How will the research team be composed?
Karin Grasenick | February 2019
To achieve excellent results, you will need team members with a variety of different competencies, bodies of knowledge and work preferences who cooperate effectively. Supportive working conditions and processes encourage excellent performance on the individual and collective levels.
To put together an excellent team that reflects the diversity you need, you might want to reflect on the recruiting process (including the performance and selection criteria). The HBP “Guideline for Selection of the Best Candidate: Recruiting and Diversity” provides detailed information and assistance regarding this issue.
Depending on the role and importance of diversity aspects in your research, you could…
- …engage scientists with the required expertise among your key research staff or
- …engage external experts to provide training and consulting to help your team develop the required expertise. (Such training on the gender dimension can be included as eligible costs in Horizon2020 proposals, see European Commission 2018).
In any case, becoming familiar with field-specific methods of sex/gender and diversity analysis will help everyone on your research team to rethink research priorities and develop high quality, innovative research.
The ideal of an “objective researcher” has been challenged (“…the conventional assumption that the researcher is a disembodied, rational, sexually indifferent subject—a mind unlocated in space, time or constitutive interrelationships with others, is a status normally attributed only to angels” Elizabeth Grosz 1986, cited in Einstein 2012, p.3). Reflect on how the personal particularities and identities of you as a researcher / research team interact to affect your research.
For instance, research subjects might react differently to a man or woman researcher, which can influence the responses in a telephone interview (European Commission 2013, p.114).
In design, for instance, “I-Methodology” refers to the (unconscious) tendency of designers to “create products for users whose interests, abilities, and needs resemble their own (European Commission 2013, p.116). As many engineers and designers are men, this may result in a “male default”,
A gender-balanced and diverse research team may be beneficial in broadening your perspective and avoiding these difficulties and biases. However, keep in mind that not all persons of a specific group are the same. For example, “one woman on a team does not represent all women” (European Commission 2013, p.117).
Have you identified the expertise required to cover the diversity aspects of your research?
- Will your team members or partners provide the needed expertise?
- Who might be a specialist in diversity from e.g. gerontology, critical race theory, gender medicine, anthropology? (e.g., persons known through publications, recommendations by team members and partners)
- In which way will the specialist(s) transfer knowledge and expertise to the project?
Does your research team reflect the diversity of your field and skill needed?
- Does the gender balance / diversity in your team correspond with the present gender ratio / diversity in your research field?
- What qualities and characteristics are needed to be successful in the discipline / in the job? To whom / to which groups are these qualities attributed usually?
- What performance and selection criteria do you use for recruiting?
What processes and structures promote individual motivation and sustainable results?
- Are processes designed to enable learning, and sharing and integration of different expertise?
- How do decision-making processes take into consideration different roles and expertise?
- Are resources provided for individual career development, regardless of gender, age, culture, etc.?