Women and Europe – Interdisciplinary Approaches, Innovative Prospects, New Sources

In recent years, research outputs and knowledge transfer to society at large via teaching and public outreach have come up against various challenges: 1) inter-, multi- and cross-disciplinarity, resulting in a range of perspectives and critical apparatuses to grasp the complexity of topics under study (Klein 2010; Klein 2004); 2) technological innovation, accelerated by digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI), enhances ‘knowledge intensity’, giving rise to new research methods and tools and unconventional lenses for analysing and interpreting results that transcend the human (Edvardson & Durst 2017); 3) the deeply collaborative nature of these processes, which involve multiple stakeholders and are driven by interactivity, exchange and co-creation in a network-based environment (Okamura 2023); 4) the gender dimension, which encourages us to address not only biases and gaps in knowledge but also broader issues related to the right to equality, non-discrimination and inclusion in society (Owen et al., 2021). These insights and intricacies underpin the frameworks of both the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the European Research Area (ERA), aiming to strengthen competitiveness, innovation, and collaboration in a more inclusive society (EC 2007).

The conference “Women and Europe – Interdisciplinary approaches, innovative prospects, new sources” seeks to explore these multifarious challenges. While the role of women in Europe, considered from multiple perspectives, has begun to be studied more systematically by researchers, leading to a growing volume of scholarly literature since the mid-1970s, the subject nevertheless remains largely underexplored (Beltrán & Szołtysek 2022; Sluga & James, 2016). Traditional disciplinary approaches in fields such as history, international relations, political studies and sociology have gradually broadened to include new perspectives such as the feminist movement, human rights issues (Rosenkranz & della Porta 2025; McLaren 2019; Deshormes 1991), gender-, sexuality- and intersectionality studies (Maes & Debusscher, 2024; Schaub 2022; Hubert 2022; Winslow 2008), and more recently also female leadership in international relations  (Buss et al. 2025; Müller & Tömmel 2023. But some topics have received less attention, including gender mainstreaming as a cross-sectoral approach (Caywood & Darmstadt 2024; Abels & Mushaben 2012), female networks and gender issues in the European integration process (Danescu & Klein 2025; Briatte, Gubin & Thébaud 2019), women in power relations and institutions (Carbonell 2019; Dénéchère 2016) and in international relations and diplomacy (Badel 2024; Seidel 2023), as well as women’s engagement in intellectual arenas (Farina et al. 2023; Schelkle, 2023; Owens & Rietzler 2021)       This gap in research is exacerbated by the lack or non-systematic nature of sources, especially archives, which have long been compiled, preserved and published/made available from the perspective and narrative of the “founding fathers,” even though women have played a key part in European history. This approach has led to women remaining in the shadows, despite the fact that they often held essential roles such as intellectuals, experts and technocrats, trade union activists and diplomats. Following the first direct universal suffrage elections to the European Parliament in 1979, and subsequently the appointment of the first female European Commissioner in 1989, women’s visibility and acceptance in leadership across various sectors progressively expanded, alongside growing scholarly, educational, and societal interest—particularly in sources documenting their contributions and preserving their memories (Schlenker, 2025). Hence, the incorporation of a gender perspective into European memory and history appears indispensable (Milosevic, 2018). This is illustrated by the growing compilation of private archives by women, alongside the emergence of oral history as a generative mode of source creation and memory preservation, has produced new materials that foreground embodied and affective dimensions of experience, thereby advancing groundbreaking methodologies for multimedia and multidimensional analysis attentive to voice, gesture, and emotion (Gammerl et.al, 2019).

Programme

The conference  is funded by the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg, the Alcide de Gasperi Research Centre, the Historical Archives of the European Union and the EUI Robert Schuman Centre, with the support of the Robert Schuman Initiative for European Affairs at the University of Luxembourg.

The Conference is organized within the framework of the research projects “The Role of Women in European and International Relations in Luxembourg’’ (after the Second World War) (University of Luxembourg, C²DH) and “The female face of the EU: hidden histories, transnational dynamics, new approaches” (HER-EUROPE) (C²DH, EUI/Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies 2024-2025).