Being valued and feeling welcome: Negotiating diversity and equity in physics
Helene Götschel (FU Berlin)

Physics and astrophysics are strongly aligned with cleverness and masculinity. ‘Not surprisingly,
physics does an extremely good job at keeping people out’ (Anna Danielsson 2022). Therefore,
encouraging women and minorities to join is not enough. We need to understand and overcome the
gendered, classed and raced politics of knowledge-producing processes in STEM. In this talk we
reflect on the power of norms and exclusions in the culture, representation, and teaching of physics.
We look, for example, at communications in research labs, educational settings at universities,
physicists’ behavior at conferences, and contents of physics textbooks. In addition, we discuss
strategies to value and welcome diversity and equity in physics (teaching).