Gender Equality in Language Studies (GELS)

Funder: Higher Education Authority of Ireland (HEA)

Website: https://genderequalitylanguages.ie/

Currently, Dr Earls is Principal Investigator of the Gender Equality in Language Studies (GELS) project, a national, inter-institutional, collaborative research project partnering Maynooth University (Lead) with Trinity College Dublin, University of Limerick and Munster Technological University. Funded by the Higher Education Authority of Ireland’s EDI Enhancement Fund, GELS seeks, primarily, to enrich current EDI debates and broaden access to successful EDI initiatives (predominantly as advancing the participation and promotion of women systemically, particularly within STEM), nationally and internationally, to include individuals (non-female identifying) in many disciplines who continue to be rendered invisible and unrecognised by current EDI approaches, and thus, promote greater multi-directionality in all aspects of EDI. GELS is a truly groundbreaking research project focused on uncovering and questioning the overt and covert systemic factors in post-primary education, which effectively uphold a feminisation of Language Studies and Education and discourage non-female-identifying post-primary students from considering such disciplines for further study. The project is currently entering its final stage within which interactive in-person and online ‘intervention’ sessions with students in order ‘to disrupt’ and overtly question the prevailing feminisation narrative with robust counter-narratives from a diverse range of individuals of different ages across the gender-identity spectrum sharing their educational and professional experiences involving the language(s) they began in post-primary school. These ‘interventions’ aim importantly at providing post-primary (particularly non-female-identifying) students with exposure to as diverse an array of potential role-models and career paths as possible, and thus shifting the dominant narrative and creating opportunities for greater participation in Education and Language Studies, particularly at university level.