EXPLORE — Listening to Researchers, Mapping the Barriers
The first big question BEYOND BARRIERS asks is simple but rarely answered properly: what really holds some researchers back, and what actually helps them move forward?Work Package 1 (EXPLORE) goes out and listens to the people who know best — the researchers themselves — across 10 European countries, so that everything the project builds afterwards rests on real lives, not assumptions.
Planned targets — these figures are goals for the research, not confirmed completed activities.
What This Work Package Does
EXPLORE maps the barriers (the things that get in the way) and the enablers (the things that help) that shape the careers of underrepresented and marginalized researchers. It looks at how these barriers and enablers overlap and pile up for people who belong to more than one group that is often left out — for example a racialized woman with a disability, or an LGBTQIA+ refugee scholar. This way of seeing overlapping experiences is called an intersectional approach.
The work focuses on four groups of researchers who are often underrepresented or marginalized in European research: racialized individuals, LGBTQIA+ persons, individuals with disabilities, and refugees and at-risk scholars.
How We Gather the Evidence
We use a mix of methods so we get both the big picture and the close-up detail:
- A large survey of researchers (around 2,000–3,000 people, with roughly 500–750 from each focus group) to measure patterns across many careers.
- A survey of research organizations (around 500 organizations) to see what policies and practices are in place.
- Analysis of around 500 policy documents (gender, diversity, and equity plans) to understand what institutions say they do.
- 40 focus group discussions — small-group conversations where people share experiences in their own words.
- 60+ in-depth interviews with researchers, plus 30 internal and 30 external expert interviews, to dig deeper into individual stories.
All of this happens across 10 European countries, so we can compare different settings and learn what is shared and what is specific to a place.
Why “barriers and enablers” together? Most studies only look at problems. EXPLORE also looks for the things that genuinely help — the supportive manager, the fair hiring process, the accessible lab — so the project can recommend real, positive changes, not just point out what is wrong.
What Comes Out of It
The findings from EXPLORE become two main deliverables that the rest of the project builds on:
| Deliverable | What it is (in plain words) | Expected |
|---|---|---|
| D1.1 Country reports | A report for each of the 10 countries describing the barriers and enablers found there. | November 2027 |
| D1.2 Barriers & enablers report | A combined report bringing all 10 countries together, showing the patterns and the differences. | February 2028 |
Who Leads It
EXPLORE is led by ELTE Tarsadalomtudomanyi Kutatokozpont (CSS) in Hungary, which specializes in research on academic careers, job insecurity, and inclusion. It runs from September 2026 to February 2028.