DATE & TIME
2 October 2025, 15:45 – 17:00
TRACKS
TRACK 3: LLs for Inclusive Soci(et)al Engagement
TRACK 5: Living Labs Operation, Methods, Tools, and Impact
ROOM
Sala d’Actes
TARGET AUDIENCE
Research and academics; Companies and entrepreneurs; Living Lab representatives and practitioners; Policymakers and city representatives
TYPE OF SESSION
Panel Debate
Description
In a time when innovation ecosystems are called to be not only competitive but also fair, inclusive, and regenerative, gender responsiveness must move beyond strategy documents into systemic practice. But what does that look like in real and concrete terms? This high-level session brings together leading voices from research, entrepreneurship, international organizations, to discuss how gender-responsive innovation can generate meaningful impact across different regions, sector and societal layers. Speakers will reflect on their experiences leading major European and global initiatives and projects, from Europe to Africa, to unpack the critical success factors for embedding gender equity in science, tech, urban systems, entrepreneurship, etc., also exploring how gender-responsive approaches can be designed, implemented, and scaled through collaboration and collaborative ecosystems (such as the Living Lab).
Bringing together practitioners, researchers, and tool developers, the session will:
- Bring a global policy perspective, offering insights into how high-level frameworks shape gender equality across innovation.
- Highlight how Living Labs can serve as enablers of structural change by embedding gender in co-creation and innovation processes.
- Focus on the transformation of tech design and entrepreneurship through inclusive and debiased co-creation methods.
- Showcase tools and lessons learnt to understand what works, for whom, and in which context when addressing structural inequalities.
- Highlight the entrepreneurial perspective from the African context, highlighting how gender-responsive entrepreneurship can be transformative and the importance of locally rooted, globally informed innovation models.
Agenda
Timeslot | Item | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| 15:45 – 15:55 | Introduction & Framing |
|
| 15:55 – 16:15 | Spark Talks Insights from the speakers on gender responsive tools, approaches, and challenges in their organizations |
|
| 16:15 – 16:50 | Panel Discussion Moderated questions to deepen the discussion and connect experiences across systems |
|
| 16:50 – 17:00 | Interactive reflection & discussion |
|
Speakers
Arianna Marucci
Junior Project Manager - ENoLL
Arianna Marucci
Junior Project Manager - ENoLLArianna Marucci is a Junior Project Manager at ENoLL. Fascinated by the intersection of new technologies and cultural diversity, she holds a Master’s degree in International Relations in the Digital Era. At ENoLL, Arianna contributes to the Projects Unit and the Proposals Writing team, where she supports the management and implementation of various projects, as well as the preparation of proposals for competitive bids.In her role, Arianna is also part of the coordination team for the GILL (Gendered Innovation Living Labs) project, where she is gaining valuable experience in the coordination of EU projects.
Inés Sánchez de Madariaga
UNESCO Chair on Gender in Science, Technology and Innovation & Chair of the UNESCO Advisory group on Gender Issues
Inés Sánchez de Madariaga
UNESCO Chair on Gender in Science, Technology and Innovation & Chair of the UNESCO Advisory group on Gender IssuesInés Sánchez de Madariaga is UNESCO Chair on Gender in STI and Professor of Urban Planning at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. She has been Visiting Scholar at Harvard University GSD, MIT, UCLA, the Bauhaus, LSE, and Columbia University, as well as a Fulbright and a Real Colegio Complutense-UPM Fellow. She is a leading international expert on gender in transportation, urban planning, architecture and STEM, with extensive experience spanning public office, policy, practice, and research. Author of over 100 articles in professional journals and a dozen books, including: Fair Shared Cities, 2013, and Engendering Cities, Routledge 2020. She is Chair of the Advisory Group on Gender Issues to the Executive Director of UN-Habitat. In 2021 she received the Matilde Ucelay Award in recognition for her professional trajectory granted by the Spanish Government.
Delicia Govender
CEO of Push Local Ventures
Delicia Govender
CEO of Push Local VenturesDelicia Govender is a UCT alumni and Graduate School of Business social innovation and entrepreneurship Professor that serves as a United Nations, Google, as well as De Beers GreenTech expert driving inclusive innovation through African indigenous knowledge systems across five continents. With 13 years experience in impact investing and venture building, through the Push Local Ventures cross-continental offices in partnership with Workshop17, this youth leader is pioneering triple bottom line transformation in Africa’s emerging Green economy markets.
Nicola Marsden
Professor of social informatics at Heilbronn University
Nicola Marsden
Professor of social informatics at Heilbronn UniversityNicola Marsden is a professor of social informatics at Heilbronn University, where she leads the Lab for Social Informatics. The lab focuses on gender-responsive innovation and inclusive tech development, using feminist living lab methods like co-creation and participatory design to tackle social and technological challenges. She has served as an expert for bodies such as the EU's ERA Committee on Gender, the German Government’s Equality Report, and the UNESCO Commission on AI and Gender. Trained in psychology, her work bridges tech, design, and organisational behaviour, with a research focus on debiasing design processes and developing socially responsible AI.
Antonius Schröder
Managing Director of the European School of Social Innovation (ESSI)
Antonius Schröder
Managing Director of the European School of Social Innovation (ESSI)Antonius Schröder is senior researcher and member of management board of sfs (Social Research Centre, Faculty of Social Sciences at the TU University Dortmund), responsible for international research. His focus is on Social Innovation (esp. combining technological and social innovation) and Vocational Education and Training. He has worked in and managed more than 30 European projects, recently co-ordinating the large scale Skills Alliance for the Green, Digital and Social Transformation of the Energy Intensive Industries (Skills4EII) and the Large Scale Partnership Energy Intensive Industries (LSP EII) under the Pact for Skills. He is Managing Director of the European School of Social Innovation ESSI, Chairman of the Focus Group People within the European Steel Technology Platform ESTEP, Leader of the Permanent Working Group “Societal Innovation” of the Advisory and Programming Group for Processes for Planet, Member of the Executive Board of the European Workplace Innovation Network (EUWIN), and Chair of the Senate of the German Professional Association of Social Scientists (BSiD). Beneath publishing more than 80 books or articles, he is editorial member of the Atlas of Social Innovation and the Social Innovation Research Agenda.
Gabriella Quaranta
Head of Network - ENoLL
Gabriella Quaranta
Head of Network - ENoLLGraduated in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Rome “Sapienza”, she has been working as project manager in EC funded projects, including GILL, working with multidisciplinary teams and driving collaboration across a diverse range of stakeholders for the last ten years and, she has been very active in the EU R&I Framework Programmes being also an Italian National Contact Point (NCP) in Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe following mobility and security areas in particular. She has been personally coordinating EC funded projects, dealing of course with project management but also with dissemination & communication activities and with stakeholder engagement, acquiring a deep knowledge in these matters as well; furthermore, she has been a trainer, delivering dozens of trainings on Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe related issues.
Andra Tanase
Strategic Development, Membership and Partnership Manager at Transilvania IT Cluster
Andra Tanase
Strategic Development, Membership and Partnership Manager at Transilvania IT ClusterCurrently serving as Strategic Development, Membership and Partnership Manager at Transilvania IT Cluster and expert consultant on green and digital transformation, conflict management, non-formal education and development cooperation. She works on strategic programme design, capacity building, intercultural intelligence, policymaking and organisational and civil society development from mainly the perspective of collaborative leadership and innovation. Her passion is to create environments of personal, organisational and societal strategic and systemic learning and development, and this only sounds complicated it is only complex and at the same time extremely feasible and magically rewarding when there is a will.