Project leader: Prof. Dr. Martina Erlemann

Research assistant: Andrea Bossmann

Student assistants: Carl-Levi Reuter, Lisa-Marie Rudek

Physics is among those fields in the natural and technical sciences with a particularly low proportion of women, and this as early as in the study entry phase. This low share of women even decreases with each step on the academic career ladder, a phenomenon known as vertical segregation. This pattern of declining representation applies not only to the category of gender but also to other diversity categories such as ethnicity, social background, sexual orientation, and others.

This project aims at exploring the career paths and career strategies of junior researchers at the Department of Physics at Freie Universität Berlin in order to investigate to which extent their experiences in the workplace cultures might be affected by their potential membership in minority groups in physics, including gender minorities, ethnic minorities and first generation academics. The project will address potential obstacles that the early career scientists might have experienced due to their belonging to a minority group and potential challenges that they might have faced during their careers, as well as whether and which opportunities they were afforded.