Bounded Feminist Agency and the Struggle for Inclusion in Academia

Equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives have gained considerable attention in academic organisations across Europe, driven by policy and legal mandates at both European and national levels. This is particularly relevant for organisations seeking funding from the European framework programme for research and innovation, Horizon Europe (2021-2027), which requires applicant research organisations to have an inclusive Gender Equality Plan (iGEP) to qualify for funding. In this context, EDI are increasingly recognised as an institutional responsibility, shifting from being the personal commitment of a few individuals to a collective organisational obligation. Despite these favourable conditions, progress remains slow, and the burden of driving change frequently still falls on women and marginalised groups, including early-career scholars, racialised people, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Moreover, the agency of these individuals is frequently bounded, with efforts to promote change facing resistance. In this chapter, we focus on the lived experiences of feminist change agents leading initiatives to incorporate EDI perspectives in teaching and research in a case study in an Italian university. To do so, we consider the notions of “power over”, “power to”, and “power with”, as articulated in 2022 by Tildesley, Lombardo and Verge, to identify the barriers to effecting change and the strategies employed by change agents to overcome challenges.