The kick-off meeting of MINDtheGEPs project was held online from 4 to 5 March 2021. During the first day, after a welcome address by the rector of Turin University (project leader and host of the meeting), a session on Gender Transformations in the Academy: Using Gender Structure Theory to Identify Challenges and Solutions was held. Barbara J. Risman from the University of Illinois gave a keynote talk. https://media.unito.it/?section=OnDemand&searchtext=Fulvio Esposito, Italian Representative in the European ResearchArea Committee and MINDtheGEPs Advisory Board, and Pauline Stoltz, Aalborg, University and At-Gender Board Member, were discussant in the session. On the following day, the project partners and two representatives of the EC, i.e. the project officer Christian Niehaus and the policy officer Athanasia Moungou, met again to speak about the project workpackages, dwelling upon the activities and achievements of the first year. On the following day, the project partners and two representatives of the EC, i.e. the project officer Chris Niehaus and the policy officer Athanasia Moungou, met again to speak about the project work packages, dwelling upon the activities and achievements of the first year. A wide activity of data collection and research in the partner institutions expected to implement a gender action plan (GEP) is planned to provide an initial assessment of the ongoing situation of gender equality in each of them. This will allow to design seven tailored GEPs to be implemented from the project second year onward. The K&I team, in charge of the monitoring and evaluation of the GEPs, will support in this phase the effort of data gathering and interpretation. Besides Giovanna Declich, team coordinator, Claudia Colonnello, Federico Marta and Giovanna Murari, team members, participated in the kick off meeting.
