Welcome to the Canvas information page for the course Physics and Gender, 7.5 credits given by the Department of Physics of Lund University, in collaboration with Stockholm University. The course is given completely online and is therefore possible to follow remotely.

Please note: This page contains only general information about the course. It does not contain any course material. When you get accepted to the course, you will get access to a page with course material.

Introduction meeting

The introduction meeting for the course will be on Zoom, for all accepted students (a link will be distributed) on

Thursday February 13th 2025 at 15.15 (3.15 PM) CET.

The rest of the schedule is about to be confirmed and will be published soon for all registered students.

Sign-up to the course

There are two ways to follow this course:

As a regular academic course, that will give you 7.5 ECTS after fulfilling the course requirements and assessments - we will label this credit-seeking participants.
As an open set of seminars and workshops, without aiming for being registered as a student and receiving academic credits - we will label this non-credit participants.

For both you need to fulfil the entry requirements (see below).

Application

For credit-seeking pariticipants:

Read more about the course and how to apply via below links. For non-Swedish speakers, please refer to these instructions in order to apply to the course: Instructions in English for applying to programmes and courses. Note: when you search for the course in the system, use the code MNXB03 or its Swedish name "Fysik och Genus".

For more information, please refer to the following pages. Please note: to see if the course is open for application, always check the Swedish web page.

Read about the course MNXB03 on Lund University's central website (in English). NOTE: For applications you can't use this page, but need to follow the instructions in the link above.
Read about the course MNXB03 on Lund University's central website (in Swedish).

For non-credit participants:

We are able to offer this course as an open set of seminars and workshops. If you are interested in following this, fill in the Microsoft form: https://forms.office.com/e/BF7YVnpSGQ

Deadline is February 5, 2025, but we appreciate if you fill it in as soon as possible.

Entry requirements

Admission to the course requires at least 90 credits in physics, physics didactics, mathematics or an equivalent discipline for example the three first semesters on an undergraduate education in physics, or an equivalent discipline and English 6/B.

Course information

Content

This course is intended for student on all levels (including PhD) and employees at universities - in the future labelled "the student". The aim of the course is that the student, on completion of the course, should have acquired an introduction to a gender perspective on physics with a focus on the research and education at the university level. The first part of the course is an introduction to a gender perspective on physics on different levels. It starts by an introduction to the gender imbalance in universities in general and in physics institutions in particular. It introduces different models to understand this - e.g. leaky pipelines. However, the focus of the course is on a deeper level. The culture of physics, i.e. the interaction between people in physics contexts, is discussed in the terms of for example bias, stereotypes, discrimination and the sense of non-belonging. Finally, the knowledge production, through research and learning, is discussed with a gender perspective. In this, the course is using the findings of the gendered innovation project, but is also introducing different epistemological theories.

The last part of the course is a small project (3 ECTS or 2 weeks of full-time work) linked to the students own study place or as a literature study.

General information

Course code: MNXB03.
Semester: spring.
Study period: the entire spring semester.
Level: second cycle.
Language: English.
Forms of teaching: lectures, group work and project work.
Assessment: written assignments, active participation, written and oral project presentation.
Grading scale: Fail or Pass.
Syllabi on Lund University's central website:
- MNXB03 syllabus on lu.se (in English)
- MNXB03 syllabus on lu.se (in Swedish)

Course literature

We will use the following resources to "set the stage":

Gendered Innovation homepage (https://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/). Excellent resource for definitions, methods, cases and so on.
Schiebinger, L. 1999, Has Feminism Changed Science? Chapter: Introduction, Harvard University Press, Available as an e-book at Lund University library (go to search under lub.lu.se) or directly here. Historical background and introduction to the topic (albeit slightly outdated).
Connell, R W and Pearse, R (2014) Gender: In World Perpsective, London, Polity. A broad overview of Gender Science.
Brage, T. 2019, What does gender have to do with physics?, Optics and Photonics News 30, 18-20. A brief introduction and overview of the topic.

Reference resources will also be:

Videos from GeDiMIRT conference on youtube - gives a playlist of talks related to gender dimensions in physics and maths from a recent conference at Lund.
Gonzalves and Danielsson 2020, Physics Education and Gender: Identity as an Analytic Lens for Research, Springer.
Drew E., and Canavan, S. (Eds) 2020, The Gender-Sensitive University - A Contradiction in Terms? Routledge.
Stewart, A J and Valian, V (2018) An Inclusive Academy: achieving diversity and excellence. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.
Schiebinger L (ed) 2008, Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering, Stanford University Press, p. 1-21.

A literature list will be updated in good time before the introduction meeting and available at the Canvas-page of the course.

Course responsible teacher

The course is a collaboration between Lund and Stockholm universities. The representatives for each university are

Tomas Brage, tomas.brage@fysik.lu.se

Barbro Åsman, barb@fysik.su.se

Schedule

The schedule for spring 2024 is not determined yet, but we plan for eight workshops spread over the spring semester, with start in early-mid February.

The schedule will during the semester be available on TimeEdit.

Read more

Do you have questions? Please contact us at studentadministration@fysik.lu.se