Berlin University Alliance

Prof. Dr. Tanja Tajmel: DiGENet International Guest 2025

Prof. Dr. Tanja Tajmel is Associate Professor at the Centre for Engineering in Society of the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science at Concordia University in Montréal, where she holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in STEM and directs the EDI Research Lab. Her scholarship integrates science education, social justice, and policy to advance inclusive approaches to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Educated in physics and science education at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz and Humboldt-University Berlin, Prof. Tajmel has established and coordinated initiatives such as PROMISE – Promotion of Migrants in Science Education and co-authored the Berlin Declaration on the Human Right to Science/STEM Education. At Concordia, she leads projects including Decolonizing Light, which analyses the colonial legacies of physics, and L’Autre dans les manuels scolaires de science, which examines representations of “the Other” in science textbooks.

Her research addresses the politics and discourses of STEM education, with particular attention to processes of “othering,” postcolonial perspectives, and decolonizing practices in science and engineering. Through her teaching, publications, and international collaborations, she contributes to strengthening the link between equity research and institutional transformation, thereby shaping STEM education toward more just and diverse futures.

Because her work combines empirical research on the politics of STEM education with the practical development of initiatives such as PROMISE, the Berlin Declaration, and large-scale projects on decolonizing physics and science curricula, Prof. Dr. Tanja Tajmel brings precisely the evidence-based, internationally networked expertise and transformative perspective on diversity and gender equality that DiGENet seeks to highlight in its International Guest Program.