Berlin University Alliance

The working group on terminology work (AG Begriffsarbeit) was established to develop a shared conceptual foundation for diversity and gender equality within the Berlin University Alliance. Its work supports DiGENet’s overarching goal of enabling evidence-based, cross-institutional collaboration by clarifying key terms and fostering critical reflection across disciplines.One central output is the DiGENet Glossary on Diversity, an online resource that offers accessible, academically grounded definitions. The Diversity Glossary was developed to provide a shared, critically informed vocabulary for addressing diversity and gender equality across the Berlin University Alliance. The glossary responds to the need for conceptual clarity in interdisciplinary contexts and supports consistent communication across institutions. Its development reflects DiGENet’s core goal of enabling evidence-based diversity work by providing accessible, academically grounded tools.

The working group on a Didactics Network (AG Fachdidaktisches Netzwerk) was established as part of DiGENet’s early phase to anchor diversity and gender equality more deeply in teaching practices across disciplines. Closely aligned with DiGENet’s goals of institutional change through knowledge transfer, this working group fosters a networked approach to inclusive higher education by supporting educators in integrating diversity-sensitive didactics into their subject-specific contexts.Its most prominent ouput, the Toolbox for Gender and Diversity in Teaching, is an open-access online platform offering practical teaching resources, blog-based knowledge exchange, and tailored workshop formats. By combining didactic guidance with current academic debates, the toolbox advances DiGENet’s mission to create accessible, research-informed tools that strengthen inclusive teaching cultures and support structural change across the university landscape

The Working Group on Queer Networks within DiGENet supports the inclusion, visibility, and equal participation of queer students, researchers, and staff across the Berlin University Alliance (FU, HU, TU, and Charité). Its aim is to strengthen queer networks across institutions, develop sustainable support structures, and contribute to BUA’s diversity strategy.Launched in late 2024, the working group convenes members from all status groups and operates with dedicated annual funding. Early activities include a cross-university networking event in June 2025, fostering exchange on challenges and best practices among queer university members, and a public queer film series in january 2025. Through such initiatives, the working group expands its network, engages new multipliers, and builds interinstitutional cooperation.

The Working Group on Making Diversity Visible – Measuring & Improving aims to collect valid and comparable data on various diversity and gender dimensions across research, teaching, and administration within and beyond the BUA. This effort responds to a persistent data gap concerning underrepresented groups, which limits the validity and applicability of scientific findings. By developing the Diversity Minimal Item Set (DiMIS), the group seeks to provide a standardized instrument for the systematic assessment of diversity dimensions such as gender, socioeconomic status, health, and experiences of discrimination. The group adopts an interdisciplinary approach to foster evidence-based innovation and promote equal opportunities.The group conducted extensive literature reviews, interviewed academic experts and community stakeholders across nine diversity dimensions, and organized workshops to design practical survey items. A key outcome is the publication “Diversified Innovations in the Health Sciences: Proposal for a Diversity Minimal Item Set (DiMIS)” (Elsevier, 2023), which presents DiMIS as a user-friendly toolkit. In addition to scholarly publications, the group has supported pilot applications of DiMIS, including its use in the regular Student Research Opportunities Program student surveys , and contributed to validation efforts in municipal administration (e.g., City of Munich) and the Berlin Science Surveyon (e.g., City of Munich) and the Berlin Science Survey

The Working Group on Critical Perspectives plays a central role in shaping the intellectual foundation of DiGENet by advancing a reflexive, intersectional approach to diversity research. Its core aim is to establish the critical examination of institutions, systems, and power relations as a cross-cutting concern within the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) and the broader Berlin research environment. By scrutinizing how structural inequalities are reproduced in academic contexts, the group contributes to anchoring critical diversity studies as an essential part of institutional transformation.Closely intertwined with other DiGENet working groups, Critical Perspectives provides conceptual guidance and methodological grounding. This became particularly evident in winter term 2021/22, when the group — together with the Audre Lorde Visiting Professor Prof. Maisha Auma — hosted a series of lab meetings that addressed three major dimensions of intersectional diversity research. The first lab meeting, jointly organized with the DiGENet Working Group on Conceptual Work, focused on interrogating the concept of diversity itself. Through comparative engagement with related frameworks such as inclusion, decoloniality, intersectionality, functional diversity, and (super-)diversity, the group laid the groundwork for a shared vocabulary of critical diversity research within DiGENet. The second session mapped existing and planned data collection efforts on diversity and discrimination across BUA institutions, with support from the Center for Inclusion Research at HU Berlin. This led to the development of an initial comparative overview, including the introduction of a new diagnostic tool — the Diversity Minimal Item Set — by gender researchers at Charité. The third lab meeting, organized with working group on a didactics network, convened key actors from across the major Berlin universities to explore strategies for embedding intersectional diversity content in all three phases of teacher education with guidance from a “toolbox” to share best practices.