The European Astronomical Society (EAS) is a society of professional astronomers working in Europe, with currently around 2500 members. It is supported by a network of affiliated societies: close to 30 national societies in most countries in Europe. Among other activities, the EAS organises an annual meeting which attracts well over 1000 participants and provides a forum for both scientific discussions and collaborations, and discussions about issues of science policy. The EAS Council formally adopted, in January 2018, the report produced by the EAS Ethics Working Group entitled EAS Ethics Statement and Guidelines for Good Practice. It is being used by organisers and participants of the EAS Annual Meeting, and is promoted as a tool for discussion and good practice throughout our field. The Ethics Statement covers a very wide range of topics, including Conduct towards others, Research, Publication and authorship, Peer review, Conflicts of interest, Organisation of and professional conduct at conferences and meetings, Fair recruiting, Widening access to our profession, Recommendations for fair employment practices, and Ethics in publishing. We will outline the history and contents of the EAS Ethics Statement and how it will be further developed, and thus illustrate how a scientific society can provide guidance.

The Asia-Pacific Space Generation Workshop (AP-SGW) provides a platform for students and young professionals to address pressing issues in the regional space sector. During the 5th AP-SGW in 2018, a working group on gender diversity explored the importance of equitable representation in the space industry, focusing on the Asia-Pacific context. This paper discusses the group’s findings on gender disparity trends, the benefits of diversity in innovation and workforce productivity, and strategies to bridge the gender gap. Proposed actions include policy advocacy, inclusive recruitment practices, digital technology adoption, and cultural shifts to empower women and underrepresented genders. By promoting diversity and inclusion, the space sector can unlock its full potential to drive innovation and achieve sustainable development goals.

(COSmos harMONIC) is a sonification project with three primary objectives: data analysis through sound, artistic inspiration, and educational outreach. This contribution focuses on the project’s efforts in inclusive astronomy outreach, particularly within the initiative, aimed at audiences including blind and partially sighted individuals, as well as a broader public seeking alternative ways to engage with astrophysics. strives to create simple, acoustically accessible astronomical cases that are easy to understand. By using sonification to complement visual data, pairs its audio creations with animations to offer a more holistic experience. This contribution presents several examples of these sonifications and reflects on our experiences with diverse audiences. Additionally, it offers insights on the role of sonification in inclusive and multi-cultural scientific outreach.

We developed a flexible extended eyepiece using optical fibres that can be used by people with severe physical handicaps for viewing celestial objects. This eyepiece can be easily attached to small telescopes and its 1-m length allows bedridden people to view through it. The diameter of the fibre bundle is 2.5 mm which provides a 4.3 arcmin diameter field of view with a 2000 mm focal length telescope, or 34 arcmin with a 250 mm focal length. We report on its potential utilisation at hospitals or similar sites and the process of the development in its presentation.

Astronomy is one field that has no boundaries as every human being enjoys the magnificent beauty of the night sky. However, engagement with people in post-conflict countries or regions in terms of astronomy education, development and outreach has been limited due to the absence of peaceful environments in which to conduct these activities. This is due to the impact of low levels of trust created because of conflict. In this presentation, we share the experiences of using astronomy education to foster peace, inclusivity, diversity, and empathy in a bid to create environments of inclusivity with lessons learnt from the July 2019 International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) conference in Cyprus.

Under the framework of the IAU 100th Anniversary, Program Group Network Astronomy for School Education (NASE) has selected “The Power of the Sun” as the key scientific activity for schools and general public. Preparing methods that would allow people to determine the Power of the Sun despite any disability was a major challenge. After evaluating the inclusiveness of the activities that had to develop to achieve the goals, two different methods were used concerning the major difficulties we recognised that would arise during the activities. One method should provide a possibility to be done by people that have any kind of photosensitivity and the other should give blind people the possibility to also measure the solar luminosity.

The workshop to search for candidates for astronomical phenomena from historical documents, was held from 2016. In order to succeed in joint research between astronomy and history, it is important to respect each other’s fields, and when we actually got to know each other’s fields, we realized that a commonality is that research is being conducted in collaboration with not only professional researchers but also citizens. This common premise is thought to have made the workshop work well, and we can expect it to develop into a new form of citizen science.

The proportion of female researchers in Japan is low, and many institutions are implementing a range of measures to improve the gender balance. We discuss the past, present, and future of the gender equality at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). We show the change of the proportion of women in NAOJ from the graduate-student level to the senior-staff level. The number of female researchers in NAOJ is gradually increasing, but it is still low compared with similar institutions in other countries.

Parenting support is one of the measures for the promotion of the gender equality in NAOJ. The supporting system is highly valued by younger researchers irrespective of gender, and significantly contributes to retain and attract young researchers to NAOJ.

Reading impairment has been empirically associated with advantages for certain specific skills involved in the analysis of images, and given that astronomy is a highly visual science, we investigated whether such capabilities may be enhanced among astronomers.

Here we examined the visuospatial abilities of 30 astrophysicists with and without a reading impairment, and compared their response with those of 74 high school students (novices). The task involved the analysis of simulated microwave spectra. (The angular span of the spectra was varied as a condition in the experiment.) As expected, the professional astrophysicists outperformed the novices, but while the performance of novices deteriorated as the span angle was broadened, performance improved in the experts. Notably, this contrast between expert and novice was especially pronounced in the scientists with a reading impairment, suggesting that those with a reading impairment may use different strategies for visual processing. (No such effects of reading impairment were observed in the novices.)

In a second study, we administered a survey [Lefly Pennington(2000)] examining the incidence of reading impairment among 148 professional astrophysicists at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and 75 similarly accomplished academics at the Harvard Business School (HBS), selected at random. We found that, depending on the criteria used for reading impairment, the incidence of reading impairment is considerably higher among astronomy professionals compared with academics in business. Together, these studies suggest that astrophysics is a profession favorable to those with a reading impairment.

The Parkes radio telescope, known affectionately as “The Dish”, is located ∼ 380 km west of Sydney, Australia, and has been in operation since 1961. The Dish is an iconic 64-metre parabolic antenna, with receiver systems capable of observing from 700 MHz to 26 GHz, with bandwidths up to several GHz, and it is part of the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility. The Dish has been the inspiration for generations of astronomers, continued to be at the forefront of radio astronomy and technology research, and, for more than 10 years, provided educational experiences through the PULSE @ Parkes programme. The high impact science conducted by Parkes has included: Surveys of atomic hydrogen, molecular lines and masers; the first detections of fast radio bursts; and the searches and determinations of long-term timing of pulsars (for which PULSE @ Parkes contributes to). We present the current and future plans for STEM-oriented education and outreach engagement with the telescope, making radio astronomy inclusive to a diverse audience, particularly for people who would not otherwise have access to facilities, such as students in remote communities.

On behalf of the project team, I report our inclusive design workshop at the Nishi-Harima Astronomical Observatory (NHAO). In the workshop, participants including people with visual or hearing impairments were asked to propose ideas to improve astronomical activities in the observatory. Some of the proposed ideas are presented. Benefits from inclusive design are also discussed.

This research is motivated by the hearing impaired students curiousity to the astronomy, however the learning media of astronomy in Indonesia special schools are still limited. The purpose of research are to develop Indonesia astronomical sign language and visualization media which effective to be used. The visualization media has been developed, accompanied by textual explanation and colorfull illustrations. The visualization media can be used by children with hearing impaired, as well as by children without physical disorders.

Scientific and technical words in Astronomy are often absent in many sign languages. To alleviate this problem, we present the first online dictionary which includes a comparative list of signs which can be used especially in sign language for countries in which they have not been yet defined. After a brief summary of the history and evolution of the sign language in France, we show that many common signs can be adopted as universal, taking into account the individual heritage of each country.

Inclusive astronomy initiatives have been gaining momentum across Latin America, aiming to make the discipline accessible to individuals with disabilities. This study maps and analyzes demonstrative experiences from various countries, highlighting efforts in science dissemination, development of tactile and audio materials, and the adaptation of physical spaces and technologies. Initiatives span academic, governmental, and international collaborations, showcasing a range of approaches from basic accessibility solutions to innovative universal design methods. Challenges include ensuring sustained funding, creating regional networks, and integrating inclusive practices within astronomy institutions. This paper proposes a classification system for inclusive actions and offers insights into future opportunities for equitable access to astronomy.

The efficacy of merely setting numerical goals is questionable for promoting diversity. Transparent evaluation criteria and processes need to be established to complement such numerical goals. Various scattered role models for researchers and engineers (gender identity and biological sex: female) can be seen as representative contributors to innovations. This committee aims to index (make visible) universal factors among these role model cases to bridge their existences into innovations by a qualitative research method. We conducted qualitative interviews for four people who are representative contributors to “inclusive innovations”, namely, innovations which benefit our society and help to create a better future. We investigated the following seven main factors (individual and socioenvironmental): General attitudes towards research; networking and multidisciplinarity; appreciation of openness to experience; possessing high motivation; psychological safety; leadership equipped with the ability to discern potentials or being mekiki (connoisseur); and coherency between aim and methods.

In our next steps, we will suggest a new assessment tool with the above seven factors in order to make the best use of a diverse field of researchers and engineers to richly yield inclusive innovation.

In this work I will present some results of my post-graduation masters thesis in 2017. The vocational masters title was “Intercultural Studies, theory and practice for the reception of asylum seekers”. The whole work is based upon a specific activity of public outreach for astronomy with a group of Imams from different Islamic countries, which is an undoubtedly underrepresented group in Europe.

Even though there are more than six million Muslim refugees (most of them from Syria or sub-Saharan Africa) in Italy, they are very often discriminated for their ethnicity, culture and religion; we hence have had difficulties in communicating because of a language barrier and gap in basic scientific knowledge. But the differences are more complex and subtler than these. This is the reason why I tried to do a psycho-sociological analysis of this meeting, going deep into the field of intercultural studies and stressing those aspects as-related to stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.

The activity began on Ramadan on 27 May 2017, and was repeated one year later on 16 May 2018.

While doing the report and the analysis of these meetings I stressed not only the astronomical concepts but also the aspects of social psychology that are particularly relevant to intercultural communication, as a greater understanding of certain socio-psychological concepts may increase the effectiveness of such POE activities.

There have been marked advances in astronomy in the last 100 years towards gender equality and the empowerment of women researchers. However, progress has been slow, and disparities still persist around the world. Women represent only about 18% of astronomers worldwide (2019) and are not immune to inequalities such as gender-based discrimination and a lack of equal opportunities. Bullying and harassment are the obstacles that not only women but also men face in their professional careers. We need to pay due attention, too, to LGBTQ requirements. Here, we will share our experiences of problems that exist in Japan and elsewhere and the ways of overcoming them. This report was in part made in collaboration with the former IAU President, Norio Kaifu, R.I.P., and his advice to overcome these problems is involved.

Our main goal of this project is to improve education equality and mental health condition for “left-behind children” through atronomy in South-western China. The target audiences are students especially the left-behind adolescents and their parents, science teachers in local high schools in Pingtang, Guihzou Province in China. We will firstly train teachers with astronomy teaching skills, since school teachers can have direct interaction with students. Then we will train the teachers on how to provide psychology aid to ‘left-behind’ adolescents. Furthermore, we will introduce the career path in astronomy education and research to the students and their parents.

The necessity to make astronomy learning media in Indonesia especially for visually impaired people has resulted in the tool named 3D Planetary of Solar System. The tool was helpful for visually impaired people to know and observe the position of the planets in real-time. The tool would be made by modifying Solar System media learning and compared by several features like touch and audio. The electronic tool used a TTP223 Capacitive touch sensor as an input module, an Arduino Mega 2560 and a YX5300 as the processing module, and, therefore, speaker for the output module. The tool works by touching the input module of the planet and returning the name and information about the planet in audio form. The tool isn’t only for educational purposes, but it can also be used as a substitute for planet observation media for a visually impaired person.

Cultural Astronomy is loosely defined as the study of humans and their relationship to the sky. With the movement to decolonize the curriculum and decolonize the academy happening in various parts of the world, academics along with students are co-creating new ways of being and learning. Inclusive astronomy can be seen as part of or adjacent to this movement, with its goals to transform astronomy to better attract and retain people embodying all types of diversity. This transformation has been framed largely as cultural with some efforts to augment rather than to transform the curriculum entirely. As a cultural astronomer, my research engages the transformation of astronomy both culturally and pedagogically. I will share how my research weaves and threads its way into creating a more inclusive astronomy (yes, I’m using intentionally gendered imagery!).