Ecsite is looking for two members to join a Horizon WIDERA proposal as Affiliated Entities.

This new proposal responds to the Call HORIZON-WIDERA-2025-06-ERA-04: Investigating and addressing career barriers faced by underrepresented and marginalised researchers.

This is a single-stage call. The three-year project is coordinated by Fraunhofer ISI. Ecsite is a project partner.

If funded, this project will gather knowledge on the experiences of researchers from underrepresented groups who are based in European research-performing organisations, focusing on identifying and exposing inequalities hindering these researchers’ career advancement. Adopting an intersectional perspective and inclusive and decolonial lenses, the analysis will target researchers whose experiences are shaped by intersections of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background (first-generation academics), and religious minority status (particularly, Muslim), including refugee researchers and researchers coming from the Roma community. Building on the empirical evidence, the project will assess the extent to which current career advancement tools are suitable for addressing intersecting barriers faced by researchers from underrepresented groups. New tools and policy recommendations will be developed.

If selected, the project is expected to start in March 2026.

Ecsite and the Coordinator of the proposal are looking for two organisations to join as Ecsite Affiliated Entities.

Your role in the project

The main tasks of the Affiliated Entity will be:

• To facilitate qualitative research in their country and in local language under the guidance of consortium partners leading these particular tasks. This will include identifying relevant respondents (researchers from underrepresented groups at different career stages, including those who were in research but dropped out), conducting and recording a number of one-hour interviews.
• To assist the project research team with identifying and contacting relevant community groups and networks, including identification and contacting relevant stakeholders to take part in project events.
• Optional: to facilitate a desk analysis of policies, laws and regulations of research-performing and funding organisations that support career development of researchers from underrepresented groups, including the analysis of Gender Equality Plans under the guidance of consortium partners leading these particular tasks.
• To identify and invite stakeholders representing the relevant groups for participation in online co-creation activities.
• To host an in-person workshop (up to 15 participants).
• To disseminate project results in their country as agreed in the Dissemination and Communication strategy.

Each participant is allocated a budget (refer to the call below for further details).

Who can apply and what are the selection criteria?

Ecsite members with Full Member status in 2025. As the project concerns careers for researchers from underrepresented and marginalised groups, the institution must demonstrate the ability to reach out to the relevant target groups and stakeholders.

The institution must be located and carry out its activities in one of the following countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Spain.

Apply by July 8, 23:59 CEST. Read the full call below.

For any further questions, please contact Federica Pastore, (fpastore@ecsite.eu).