The idea to establish an InterGender Consortium is based on the successful collaboration of 11 Swedish and 5 international gender research training organizations within the framework of the Swedish-International Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, InterGender.

InterGender was funded by the Swedish Research Council with 12.5 million SEK, 2008-2014. The funding has provided the possibility to establish a strong joint platform for cutting edge PhD training within the area of interdisciplinary feminist research. This is the background for the 16 InterGender partners’ decision to try to establish a more permanent organizational base for further research training collaboration.

In so doing, the partnership responds to one of the more long-term objectives of the InterGender Research School: to make InterGender permanent beyond the life cycle of the grant from the Swedish Research Council.  The consortium proposal is a response to this objective. It results from in-depth discussions and developmental work of the InterGender board, representing all partner institutions as well as representatives of the doctoral students, affiliated with them.

History

Since its inception in 2008, InterGender has organized 29 international PhD courses in interdisciplinary gender studies as well as four international conferences with a main focus on PhD students’ participation and training. Moreover, sustainable networks with regular workshops for first-phase PhD students have been organized within the framework of InterGender.

InterGender is indebted to a predecessor: The Nordic Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, NorsGender, funded by NordForsk with 5 million NOK, 2004-2009. NorsGender gathered 40 partner universities in 11 countries, and offered 29 international PhD courses. The School was run in collaboration with the Nordic Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender Research Gender Research (NIKK), Oslo, and an international board. It was very positively mid-term evaluated by an international peer review panel, organized by NordForsk. The experiences from this School gave impetus to the setting up of InterGender, as well as to a collaboration between the two Schools in the last phase of the NorsGender funding.

InterGender is building on NorsGender, as well as on successful experiences of the participating gender research training organizations and schools in Sweden, Norway, Finland, The Netherlands, Germany, and France. Inspirations have also emerged from Athena (The Socrates funded Thematic Network for European curriculum development in Gender Studies, 1998-2009) where many of the NorsGender and InterGender-partners took actively part in joint PhD- and master level curriculum development.