Exploring the diversity within EANA and AbGradE as mirror of the European astrobiology community

Abstract

Since its foundation in 2001, EANA (European Astrobiology Network Association, http://www.eana-net.eu/) has organized annual meetings to foster and strengthen the astrobiology community within Europe. The growth of the European astrobiology community over the years is reflected not only in the growing participation at the annual EANA meeting but also in the foundation of the graduate network AbGradE (Astrobiology Graduates in Europe, https://abgrade.eu/) with many activities, meetings and workshops organized since 2014, including several joint events with EPEC (the EuroPlanet Early Career network), as well as the foundation of the European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) in 2019. The EANA Executive Council consists of national representatives from currently 21 European (and affiliated) countries with active astrobiology groups, networks or societies, as well as representatives of the early-career AbGradE network. The EANA network and especially the Executive Council therefore directly promote a broad and diverse representation of many career stages as well as nationalities including normally underrepresented countries. After more than two decades of a formal astrobiology network in Europe, it is time to explore and evaluate the actual obtained diversity within EANA and AbGradE with respect to nationality, gender and career status of our members based on our annual meeting participation, and to reflect on future measures to further improve the diversity and inclusiveness of our networks and events. We find that while our annual events are very diverse with respect to career stage, gender and research disciplines, a few aspects leave room for improvement, including especially a more balanced representation of different countries with astrobiology research within Europe and beyond. We discuss different equality, diversity and inclusivity measures that can be implemented for future EANA and AbGradE meetings in Europe to better represent the full astrobiology community within our networks.