Tag: Academia
Integrating the Region’s Academic Community: Poland’s Perspective on Opportunities and Challenges Ahead
Geopolitical instability has highlighted the need to strengthen academic cooperation and research capacities in Central and Eastern Europe. On October 1, 2026, in Warsaw, the Institute of Economics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IE PAS), together with the FREE Network, organized the conference Regional influence through academia: Poland’s role in integrating the regional academic community. This brief summarizes the conference discussions on Poland’s potential to enhance regional academic integration and the opportunities and challenges involved.
Introduction
Several years after the start of the brutal clampdown on the Belarusian opposition in 2020 and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, countries in Central and Eastern Europe continue to grapple with their consequences, which, apart from the most tragic effects, include significant disruption to the region’s academia. While numerous programs have been implemented at country and European levels to support displaced institutions and individuals, the continued brutalities and growing pressure on civic and academic freedoms prompt the question of whether more can be done to encourage stronger academic cooperation and deeper integration in the region.
The Warsaw conference, held immediately after the tragic Russian drone attacks on the main building of the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, sought to address this question. The loss of life, injuries, and physical destruction reminded participants of the urgency of developing a broader strategy to support regional academics and strengthen research capabilities, both in the current instability and to help build a more peaceful and stable future.
Poland as a Research Destination
The conference began by taking stock of Poland’s standing as a research destination, including its performance in attracting and retaining international research talent and the institutional and structural challenges constraining its competitiveness as a research destination. Paweł Kaczmarczyk, professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Warsaw and Director of the Centre of Migration Research, presented the country as an emerging but institutionally constrained destination for international academic talent. He highlighted that foreign nationals constitute just 2.8 percent of the academic staff in Poland, compared with close to 32 percent in leading research destinations such as the United Kingdom or Switzerland. Poland’s limited academic internationalization could be attributed to factors including relatively lengthy legalization processes, low academic salaries, language barriers, institutional bottlenecks, and other shortcomings in public services. Many of these factors also shape the destination choices of international students.
More fundamental factors than those usually raised in the literature on academic migration drove the arrival in Poland of numerous Ukrainian academics and students following the full-scale Russian invasion. The months following February 2022 showed how important non-financial support can be in facilitating academic integration in times of crisis.
Yet to become a centre of scientific excellence, Poland needs to be more than a temporary shelter for regional academics: it must attract researchers from the region and retain the best Polish scientists. Professor Natalia Letki, a sociologist and political scientist from the University of Warsaw, presented her findings on the factors shaping Polish researchers’ decisions to pursue academic careers abroad. Her research is based on a survey of European Research Council (ERC) grant recipients with national or family ties to Poland who pursue their careers elsewhere in Europe (Letki et al., 2024). She emphasized that attracting and retaining leading researchers requires an environment conducive to frontier research: strong institutional support, advanced research infrastructure, international collaborations, and a critical mass of excellent scientists. While Poland performs reasonably well in research output relative to its funding (Scopus-indexed publications per capita), it underperforms internationally in frontier research. Polish institutions have secured only 105 ERC grants to date, compared with nearly 1,300 awarded to their Spanish counterparts, despite comparable research and development expenditure. The attractiveness of Polish institutions is undermined by perceived academic inbreeding and resistance to external candidates. Restrictive career structures, particularly the habilitation requirement, limit academic independence and hinder career progression. These shortcomings are linked to a pattern of brain drain in which the emigration of leading and promising researchers is not adequately offset by an inflow of comparable international talent.
The initial interest of some survey respondents in returning to Poland, before being dissuaded by prevailing conditions, points to the country’s untapped potential to attract research talent. Given that many Central and Eastern European countries face similar, if not more pronounced, institutional and administrative challenges, a competitive research hub in Poland could be a comparatively attractive destination for academics seeking to establish their careers in the region.
Academia in times of Peace, Unrest and War: The FREE Network Experience
Support for academic development in the region can take different forms and formats. As noted in the opening remarks of Michał Myck, Director of the Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA) and a professor at the IE PAS, the FREE Network exemplifies a long-term commitment to regional cooperation across diverse political and institutional conditions. Connecting research institutes in seven countries through a shared commitment to informing policy and effecting change, the Network strengthens research capacities, facilitates knowledge transfer and builds lasting academic partnerships among its members. Such cooperation – with important financial support – has played a vital role in preserving the Network’s independent research in economics and political science and supporting academic communities afflicted by political instability and conflict.
The need for strong centres of academic excellence also resonated in the welcoming remarks of Professor Andrzej Szablewski, Chair of the Academic Council at the IE PAS. The Institute’s role in supporting Poland’s socio-economic transition and government policies during more recent crises exemplifies the importance of such centres beyond strictly academic discoveries.
The Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) in Riga is another example of such centres in the Baltic States. Anders Paalzow, Rector of SSE Riga, drew on his extensive experience in the region to argue that autonomous islands of excellence can generate significant positive externalities for socio-economic development through research and education. Citing BEROC, which relocated from Belarus to Lithuania due to political repression, he also illustrated the importance of international cooperation and support, and highlighted the potential for Poland to serve as a regional hub, especially for such displaced research institutions.
Victoria Sereda, a sociologist at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) and coordinator of the Virtual Ukraine Institute for Advanced Study (VUIAS) at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, focused on academic resilience in times of war and the role of academic institutions beyond their standard responsibilities. She showcased how KSE has not only sustained its activities but expanded despite the raging war, increasing enrolment, introducing new programs, and fostering greater international partnerships. It supports Ukraine’s war effort by providing technical expertise and training in areas ranging from agriculture to military preparedness, promotes entrepreneurship and start-ups, and develops technologies for wartime needs. Despite continued Russian efforts to undermine Ukrainian academia, Viktoria Sereda’s account reflected Ukrainian academics’ determination to continue their work, with the aim of ending the war and supporting post-war recovery.
Poland as a Regional Centre of Academic Excellence: Panel Discussion
The final session featured a panel discussion with Sweden’s Ambassador to Poland, Martina Quick, Torbjörn Becker (Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics), Jerzy Duszyński (Polish Academy of Sciences), Michał Goszczyński (Ministry of Science and Higher Education), Natalia Letki and Victoria Sereda. Moderated by Michał Myck, the discussion explored what is needed to establish Poland as a regional centre for academic excellence. The panel also addressed Poland’s handling of past academic crises, government initiatives to strengthen academic cooperation, and the institutional reforms needed to attract and retain leading researchers.
Professor Duszyński reflected on programs supporting Ukrainian academics, some of which, he noted, have been successful although limited in scale and duration. Michał Goszczyński stated that the Polish government remains committed to providing as much assistance to Ukrainian researchers as possible, and that Poland’s continued access to European structural funding could help finance initiatives such as an international research hub in the country. He pointed to SOLARIS – the national synchrotron radiation centre – as a demonstration of the country’s capacity to develop research infrastructure that serves a broader scientific community. Natalia Letki advocated for the creation of ‘islands of excellence’, arguing that the reforms needed to attract and retain leading researchers may require dedicated support, as reforming established institutions has repeatedly encountered significant friction, with little sign of this diminishing. She stressed that such support could provide both the necessary resources and valuable institutional legitimacy.
Torbjorn Becker shifted the discussion toward a more specific proposal: establishing a university in Poland to attract outstanding Polish, regional and international academics. Polish and Swedish government representatives agreed that funding was unlikely to be the fundamental challenge. Michał Goszczyński identified the difficulty of attracting a critical mass of excellent researchers from established institutions, and anticipated resistance from these institutions, as more significant challenges. Ambassador Quick indicated that a compelling proposal with a clear purpose and the potential for lasting impact could attract support from the Swedish government, which has other long-standing initiatives in the region. Natalia Letki was optimistic, arguing that by offering secure employment, academic independence and a competitive research environment, the venture would be especially attractive to younger researchers. She recommended starting small and growing gradually, drawing parallels with the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). Ambassador Quick also took the pragmatic view that networks of institutions and researchers could achieve similar objectives without a traditional university. Viktoria Sereda pointed to VUIAS as a different institutional format, whose combination of virtual and in-person collaboration has kept researchers across borders connected to Ukrainian institutions.
The panel was cautiously optimistic about Poland’s potential to develop into a regional centre of academic excellence, particularly given its comparative advantage within the region and geographic proximity to Belarus and Ukraine. Administrative and institutional barriers, rather than financial constraints, were identified as the key obstacles to establishing and sustaining such a centre.
Concluding Remarks
The conference offered a solid foundation for considering Poland as a centre of academic excellence, for both Polish academics and the wider Central and Eastern European community. Poland clearly has considerable potential to strengthen regional academic cooperation by developing research capacities, and important advantages such as its geographical location and access to EU funding programs. Participants also stressed that – like other countries that have become significant research hubs – Poland stands to benefit from such regional and international cooperation. While realizing this potential will require overcoming several long-standing barriers, the chance to become a centre of excellence is Poland’s to take.
List of Conference Speakers and Panellists
- Torbjörn Becker: director of SITE at the Stockholm School of Economics since 2006, coordinating the work of the FREE Network and serving on the boards of several of its institutions, including the Kyiv School of Economics; leading expert on the economies of Russia and Eastern Europe.
- Jerzy Duszyński: professor of biological sciences and full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences; served as President of the Academy from 2015 to 2022; biochemist at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology.
- Michał Goszczyński: Director at the International Cooperation Department of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education; oversees Poland’s participation in large research infrastructures and in major EU programs such as Horizon Europe.
- Paweł Kaczmarczyk: professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw and Director of the Centre of Migration Research, specializing in labour migration, high-skilled mobility, and migration policy.
- Natalia Letki: professor at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw; recipient of an ERC Starting Grant in 2009; specializing in the areas of public goods, social trust and attitudes to migration.
- Michał Myck: director of Centre for Economic Analysis and professor at Institute of Economics PAS; specializing in labour economics, fiscal policy and welfare analysis.
- Anders Paalzow: professor of economics specializing in public and financial economics; since 1999 Rector at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, chairing the board of the Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies (BICEPS); recently appointed as interim director of the Belarusian Economic Research and Outreach Centre.
- Martina Quick: Sweden’s Ambassador to Poland since September 2025, having specialized on Central and Eastern Europe in her international career; earlier: Ambassador to Georgia and Armenia, Deputy Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Minister Counsellor at the Swedish Embassy in Kyiv.
- Viktoriya Sereda: professor of sociology at the Kyiv School of Economics, coordinating the Virtual Ukraine Institute for Advanced Studies at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin; specializing in migration, memory and identity.
- Andrzej Szablewski: professor of economics and Chair of the Academic Council at the Institute of Economics PAS, serving earlier as the Institute’s Director; specializing in energy economics and regulatory frameworks of the energy sector.
References
- Letki, N., Nowotny, M., & Sankowski, P. (2024). „To be where the frontier science happens”. Open Science Framework. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/7ryt2
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes. AI tools may have been used in the preparation of this brief. Where used, they were applied responsibly and in accordance with appropriate scientific and ethical standards. The authors and editor remain fully responsible for their respective contributions to the brief.
Lessons From the FROGEE Conference “The Playing Field in Academia: Why Are Women Still Underrepresented?”
Despite an increase in women’s representation since the beginning of the 20th century, women remain underrepresented in academia and other high-skilled professions. Academia has been prone to gender disparities both within and across fields as well as across academic ranks. In an endeavour to examine and address the underrepresentation of women in the academic profession, the Centre of Economic Analysis (CenEA), together with the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and other partners of the Forum for Research on Gender Economics (FROGEE) at the FREE Network, organized the two-day conference “The playing field in academia: Why are women still underrepresented?”, in Warsaw June 21-22, 2023. This brief offers insights from the presentations and panel discussions held at the conference.
To date, there are few, if any, high-skilled professions exhibiting gender balance, and academia is no exception. Consequently, this imbalance has been subject to increased multidisciplinary research attention, exploring its origins and potential remedies. However, attaining a comprehensive understanding of gender disparities remains a challenge. For instance, much remains to be learnt about their long-run dynamics, a subject addressed by Carlo Schwarz, in one of the conference’s keynote lectures.
A Century of Progress
Carlo Schwarz (in joint work with Alessandro Iaria and Fabian Waldinger, 2022) trace the evolution of gender gaps in academia across a variety of domains at the global level throughout the 20th Century. Facilitated by an unprecedentedly large database of nearly 500,000 academics, spanning 130 countries and supplemented by publication and citation data, the authors specifically examine gender imbalances in recruitment, publishing, citation patterns, and promotions.
They find that in 1900 women constituted roughly 1 percent of all hires in academia (226 women, with only 113 hired as full professors). By 1969 the share of female academics had risen to about 6.6 percent, and by the year 2000 it had grown to approximately 17 percent. These rates varied across disciplines, institutions, and countries. For instance, teaching-centric disciplines such as pedagogy and linguistics, exhibited higher representation relative to research-oriented ones.
The research subsequently reveals a hump-shaped evolution of the gender gap in academic output – starting small before peaking at 45 percentage points fewer publications by women in 1969, thereafter declining to 20 percentage points. These publication disparities were also found to share a U-shaped relationship with the share of women in academia, indicating the interconnectedness of gender gaps.
The authors also address gender gaps in citations, identified by the use of a novel machine learning approach, forecasting a paper’s citations had it been written by a man. The results indicate a progressive reduction in the citation gap during the 20th century, decreasing from 27 percentage points (pre-WW1) to 14 percentage points (interwar) and eventually to 8 percentage points (post-WW2) fewer citations of papers by female relative to male academics. These gender gaps in academic output reiterated current evidence from Mexico, presented at the conference by Diana Terrazas-Santamaria, showing that women are associated with lower citation rates. Terrazas-Santamaria attribute the low rates to gender differences in both the number of publications and duration of academic careers.
The work by Iaria, Schwarz and Waldinger (2022) further showcase the gender disparities in career advancement in academia, which similarly decreased over the years. At the point of the greatest gender disparity, women required an approximately 6 percentage points better publication record to have the same promotion probabilities as their male counterparts.
The Leaky, Dry Pipeline
In the conference’s second keynote, Sarah Smith highlighted how academia, much like other professional occupations, exhibits a leaky pipeline. This is a phenomenon characterized by a declining representation of women as they ascend through the academic hierarchy. When examining specific fields, Smith’s results indicate that the gender disparities in economics much more closely align with those observed in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) than other social science disciplines. Furthermore, the economics’ field illustrate a significant lack of diversity among its new entrants. This phenomenon, referred to as the dry pipeline, generates future cohort implications, as they result in less demographically representative cohorts from which future professors can be recruited (see Stewart et al., 2009).
The cross-disciplinary comparison of the dry pipeline addressed in the keynote, contest the mathematical rigor of economics as a barrier to entry, as mathematics itself demonstrated higher women representation at A-level and undergraduate levels. In a following discussion panel, which focused on ensuring a fair start in academia (comprised of Yaroslava Babych, Alessandra Casarico, Federica Braccioli and Marta Gmurek, and moderated by Maria Perrotta Berlin), the panellists acknowledged that deeply engrained social expectations, gender trained behaviours and a lack of awareness constitute some of the persistent hindrances to the (early) involvement of women in specific fields, and the academic profession in general.
Additional factors influencing the gender balance in recruitment and promotion are gendered references, and the presence or absence of shared research interests between candidates and recruitment panels. These themes were extensively investigated in the work presented by Alessandra Casarico on the conference’s opening day. Specifically, results from collaborative work with Audinga Baltrunaite and Lucia Rizzica, highlight that grindstone words (e.g., “determined”, “hardworking”, etc.) are frequently used in recommendation letters to describe female candidates, while standout words (e.g., “excellent”, “strongest” etc.) typify male candidates’ references. Compared to their male counterparts, women are also shown to be more inclined to accentuate personality traits when serving as referees. This added to a broader literature demonstrating that female candidates’ recommendation letters frequently exhibit brevity, raise doubts, carry a weak tone, and emphasize candidates’ interpersonal skills and personality traits rather than their ability. Moreover, separate results from Casarico’s work (with Piera Bello and Debora Nozza) illustrate that research similarity between the recruiting committee and the candidate predict the likelihood of recruitment. The authors argue that the relationship is indicative of a bias against women if – as shown by the authors – women are less likely to be the candidates with the highest similarity.
In her presentation, Anne Sophie Lassen offered a different factor that may contribute to the attrition in the pipeline: the influence of parenthood on academic careers. Results from her work (with Ria Ivandić) indicate that while parenthood does not significantly influence graduation rates, it extends doctoral studies by an average of 7 months for women. Moreover, Lassen highlighted a declining trend of remaining in academia after becoming a parent, particularly pronounced among women.
More Areas of Imbalance
The remaining conference presentations and panel discussions explored additional domains of gender imbalances within academia. Iga Magda showcased evidence from her joint work with Jacek Bieliński, Marzena Feldy and Anna Knapińska of gender differences in remuneration during the early stages of an academic career, substantiating a gap within a year of graduation. These disparities endure throughout respondents’ careers and are contingent on the field of study – largest among engineering and technology graduates and lowest among those from the humanities and arts fields. Furthermore, it was observed that productivity plays a negligible role in the identified pay gaps, as its impact is similar for both genders.
The panel composed of Eleni Chatzichritou, Marta Łazarowicz-Kowalik, Jesper Roine and Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz, and moderated by Michał Myck, deliberated on exposed disparities in the application for, and the success rates in attaining research funding in Poland and Europe – as seen in the National Science Centre (NCN) and the European Research Council research grants, respectively. The discussion highlighted how quantitative measures used in the allocation of research funding are riddled with subjective criteria that often benefit male academics. They also recognized how quests to allocate funds to the most successful candidate inadvertently penalize women with career breaks.
Another panel including Lev Lvovskiy, Carlo Schwarz, Sarah Smith, Marieke Bos and Joanna Tyrowicz, and moderated by Pamela Campa, lauded the growing objective data shedding light on gender inequalities in academia. The panellists discussed current challenges in identifying and quantifying aspects of gender disparities. For instance, currently used proxies do not allow to capture more subtle disparities, like microaggressions faced by female academics from students – emphasizing the need for more individual level survey data.
The panels were further enriched by personal anecdotes and filled with retrospective advice shared by both early career and established academics. To contextualize the above, a few cases from the FREE Network countries follow.
Evidence From Within the FREE Network
Yaroslava Babych shared insights concerning women in higher education in Georgia and other countries of the South Caucasus. Preliminary findings of her study confirm the presence of gender inequality in academia, evident in disparities in access to higher education as well as gender segregation across both fields and countries. Notably, women comprise a majority of the graduates in bachelor’s and master’s of art programs, whereas higher research-level programs such as doctors of science, and top echelons of the academic hierarchy remain predominantly male. Moreover, female academic output is found to be lower than that of male counterparts.
Lev Lvovskiy discussed the case of Belarus, highlighting the influence of the Soviet legacy. A significant factor linked to this legacy is exploiting university enrolment to circumvent compulsory conscription of men, allowing male university admissions to serve a secondary purpose beyond acquiring knowledge. This increases the perceived opportunity cost of enrolling a woman. Lvovskiy further documented the academic trajectories of Belarusians, revealing a majority of women at college and doctoral levels, but being underrepresented among doctoral graduates. The results further indicate significant cross-disciplinary gender disparities, with humanities having close to 80 percent women representation and engineering and information and technology (IT) fields having less than 30 percent women representation.
Monika Oczkowska provided evidence of gender disparities in Poland. Findings from the country reveal an overrepresentation of women graduates from bachelor through doctoral levels, and relative parity at post-doctoral level, but lower proportions at habilitation, associate professor, and professor levels. These general results confirm the higher detail findings presented by Karolina Goraus-Tanska on the first day of the conference. Results from Goraus-Tanska’s work (with Jacek Lewkowicz and Krzysztof Szczygielski) suggest that the drop-off among female academics from habilitation levels is not attributed to higher output expectations for women, but rather stems from the impact of parenthood.
Oczkowska further demonstrated that female academics in Poland are characterized by fewer international collaborations and lower levels of international output. Polish female academics were also showcased to engage in more international mobility during their doctoral studies relative to men, with the converse holding true after obtaining a doctoral degree. A potential explanation for this mobility decline among female academics, could be the increased burden of familial responsibilities at the post-doctoral and higher levels. Moreover, fewer women were reported to have applied for NCN grants and were underrepresented among the beneficiaries of these calls. Lastly, female academics in Poland record significantly lower total project costs relative to their male counterparts.
‘Plugging’ the Leak
In light of the aforementioned, what measures can be taken to address the gender imbalances in academia? As summarized by Sarah Smith, early initiatives have involved tracking women representation (e.g., in admissions, progression, hiring, etc.) within departments and/or institutions to identify where in the pipeline their progress is impeded. Attempted initiatives include formulation of seminar guidelines to overcome unfair experiences, as well as using gender-blind recruiting and objective hiring criteria to equalize hiring opportunities. Some other efforts, such as diverse recruitment panels have been unsuccessfully adopted, as they seem to embolden hostile male recruiters and load female panellists with unrewarded administration tasks. Conversely, mentoring has helped women build networks, publish more, and advance professionally. Awareness raising campaigns have reduced disparities in teaching evaluations and remain vital in addressing the dry pipeline and both transparent workload allocation and rewarding of administrative tasks have been shown to reduce promotion gaps in academia. In addition to the above, initiatives such as fostering gender-neutral networking opportunities, collaborations and a more diverse faculty were also deliberated during the conference.
Concluding Remarks
The conference advanced dialogue on societal and structural constraints to gender equality in academia and provided a platform to exchange ideas on how the shared objective of a more inclusive and equitable academic environment can be achieved. While the challenges remain abundant, and the costs associated not always negligible, it remains crucial to assess achievements, such as those resulting from mentoring and awareness intervention initiatives and recognize that further opportunities to enhance equity within the profession exist.
Additional Material
Seminar Participants – short bios
Conference Programme 22.06.2023
Conference Participants – short bios
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.