The ADBIS community believes that diversity and culture of support encourage retention and attraction of talent, promote diversity of thought and perspective, and help make the scientific community more flexible and responsive in times of change. As the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Co-chairs of the ADBIS 2025, we worked closely with the General and Program Co-Chairs to build an inclusive and equitable conference and guide researchers in our community to adopt a more inclusive mindset toward different individuals regardless of their age, sex, identity, race, cultural background, religion, physical and mental ability, sexual orientation, parental and marital status, origin, etc.
ADBIS 2025 DEI Program
The ADBIS 2025 conference includes several DEII actions under the premise that the first step to promoting DEI is understanding the meaning and interpretation of DEI under a multi-perspective vision.
Guidelines for DEI aware communication
Utilise the materials generated by the DEI Database Interconference initiative to prepare guidelines and examples of inclusive and discriminatory behaviour and language.
- Inclusive communitation: encourage authors and participants to consider them when composing their papers and presentations.
- Pre-conference survey: collecting anonymous data that will be used to have a better understanding of our community so that we can develop more effective strategies to promote DEI.
- Support participation of scientists at the conference: we worked with the organisation committee to propose two honorary registration grants to support the DC and DEI programs.
DEI in the ADBIS 2025 Main Program
In the DEI session of the main program, we introduced the DEI DB initiative, its goals, and actions.
- Keynote: From restriction to resource: Fostering (computing) workplace with diverse abilities, Maija Hirvonen
Abstract: Today and increasingly in future, many parts of the world are faced with labour shortage. To overcome this challenge and secure prosperity, societies need to take and keep everybody on board. This translates to, i.a., creating accessible workplaces to benefit from the diverse abilities people have due or thanks to disabilities and functional diversity. In this talk, we will review recent research and policies about disability and employment, with a focus on tech industries. We will look behind the numbers at the qualitative transformations on organisational, social and individual levels brought about by different abilities at work. While acknowledging the many barriers faced along the way, the talk seeks to highlight the opportunities in diversity and change perceptions related to disabilities: What if we perceive them as resource rather than restriction? What happens when we change accessibility to agentivity? What new ideas and models of being can we bring from the margins to the masses? While different types of disability and functional diversity as individual property amount to approximately one fifth of the world’s population , they equally concern us all as a potential future property. - Panel: “Repositioning DEI: The Urgent Reimagining of DEI in an Era of Retrenchment”.
DEI in the Doctoral Consortium
We worked with the Doctoal Consortium School to organise the program for PhD students attending ADBIS 2025.