CYGNA - 11+ years of supporting women in academia

Reviews our bumper crop of CYGNA activities in the 2024-2025 academic year

Anne-Wil Harzing - (updated Sun 5 Oct 2025 12:11)

In June 2014, we founded CYGNA (= SWAN = Supporting Women in Academia Network). We have been growing in size and scope ever since. This blogpost provide an overview of what we have been up to in the 2024-2025 academic year.

Between our plenary meetings, new-member drop-ins, informal meetups, (bi-)monthly CYG TSR and CYG Senior, and weekly CYGNA Writes meetings, our calendar was overflowing again this year. More than 40 different CYGNA members were involved in the organization of our events.

So first of all, a million thanks to everyone who has been involved in crucially important CYGNA service work. Your enormous commitment to making academia a better place matters! Granted, your work may often be invisible to your employers, but we hope that this blogpost makes you proud of what we as swans have achieved collectively.

It was quite a year! Still glowing from our 3-day event to celebrate CYGNA's 10-year anniversary at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Park (meeting #60), we started it by co-creating CYGNA's future through academic storytelling and ended it with a wonderful onsite meeting in Oxford. Below we reminisce about what we have been up to in between.

You can find many links to more extensive write-ups for stories and pictures in the rest of this blogpost. In addition, we also updated our mission, values, & meeting charter and expanded the CYGNA Frequently Asked Questions.

Plenary meetings

We started the CYGNA year with an event in October that – after briefly recapping CYGNA’s history – aimed to co-create CYGNA’s future by sharing stories from members (Anne-Wil, Christa, Satkeen Azzizadeh, Tatiana Andreeva, Jane Neal-Smith, and Ruwaiha Razik) about how the network inspires them in their academic lives. The event also launched our 10-years of CYGNA video [see image above] taking viewers through a whirlwind journey of CYGNA’s history.

December featured our fifth end of year celebration; a tradition started in 2020 in the first COVID year. This year it was organised by Satkeen and Dan Ha Le and featured a presentation by Anne-Wil on the ABC of research across career stages. We had great fun with Christmas carols and whimsical Winter questions.

January is CYGNA North month, this year with an on-campus meeting in Leeds. The CYGNA North team (Axèle Giroud, Martyna Śliwa, and Annie Wei) featured an exciting line-up of speakers talking about how to find your voice and making it heard. The day also featured gale force wind, which meant a smaller than usual audience, so the team kindly repeated the session online in April.

Our March session The good, the bad and the ugly of editorial/reviewing responsibilities [see image to the left] organized by Ciara, demystified this important part of our careers with three panels featuring no less than ten CYGNA sisters: Maike Andresen, Argyro Avgoustaki, Marian Crowley-Henry, Axèle Giroud, Inge Hill, Lee Martin, Margarita Nyfoudi, Victoria Pagan, Olga Ryazanova, and Martyna Śliwa.

In May, a wonderful team of four CYGNA members with a shared research interest in gender and diversity (Seonyoung Hwang, Emamuzo Idegbesor, Tina Miedtank, and Huong Nguyen) organised our first dedicated research networking event: CYGNA: Research networking meeting in gender & diversity. We are looking forward to many new research collaborations springing up from this event.

Finally, in June an on-campus meeting in Oxford featured four presentations on the general theme of Getting creative with qualitative research methods. Organised by Sylwia Ciuk and Joanna Karmowska, it also included presentations by CYGNA members Karen Handley and Charikleia Tzanakou. The event was followed by a collective walk in Oxford.

New member drop-ins

Introduced by Ciara O’Higgins in 2023, we organized no less than four new members drop-ins this year in October, November, February and April. They were hosted by Satkeen, who makes everyone feel super-welcome, and supported by the Lead Team: Anne-Wil, Christa, and Ciara. Although tailored towards new members, many established members are now also attending these meetings to catch up with others, to welcome new members, or just to see some friendly faces.

After a short introductory presentation that takes attendees on a whirlwind tour of CYGNA [see the last page of the presentation below], it is a free-flowing meeting with introductions and questions. We have had anywhere from 12 to 33 attendees and we always left the meeting inspired and happy.

CYG TSR – Teaching and Scholarship CYG

Our very first CYG [=SIG, i.e. CYGNA Special Interest Group] for those passionate about Teaching and Scholarship research was founded in April 2024 by Jane Neal-Smith in collaboration with Margaret Fletcher, Sîan Stephens, and Elizabeth Wang.

The teaching and scholarship CYG is intended for CYGNA members who are interested in scholarship/ pedagogical research and who may be on a teaching and scholarship contract. The CYG aims to support women who are looking for collaborations across institutions and is passionate about promoting scholarship as a research specialism.

The group meets every second month online and so far, we have hosted webinars by Professor Moira Fischbacher-Smith and Dr Lyubomira Gramcheva and Dr Vesco Paskalev. These events have showcased initiatives and research in the field of teaching and scholarship. If you are interested in presenting or being part of this CYG please contact Jane.

CYGNA Writes: writing in community, achieving in silence 

CYGNA Writes is a new initiative conceived and run by Christa Sathish since November 2024. CYGNA Writes offers a chance to participate in proactive sessions that foster an inclusive, low-pressure environment, where everyone can write in focused silence. Our writing space is inter-disciplinary, welcoming all types of writers and projects.

CYGNA Writes sessions cultivate a spirit of mutual encouragement and respect through calm camaraderie and trust within a safe writing space. This environment lays the groundwork for supportive relationships. It not only boosts individual productivity but also paves the way for enduring friendships, the sharing of ideas, and the creation of new collaborative opportunities, enriching both personal and collective writing experiences beyond the sessions. If you are a CYGNA member and interested in joining us feel free to contact Christa.

Career stage CYGs: CYG Senior

The first of our career stage CYGs has been years in the making. Anne-Wil has wanted to run a Senior CYG for at least five years, but it took Ciara’s determination and commitment to finally make it happen. The Senior CYG is for CYGNA members who are in the later stages of their academic careers, typically at full professorial level, and with considerable leadership experience in academic institutions, e.g. responsible for big research teams, Department heads, (Associate) Deans, etc.

We have some thirty members and beyond our launch in December have held five 1-hour monthly meetings to date, attended by 11 to 18 members, and dealing with themes such as career crafting, finding our professorial identity, positioning ourselves for a career change, driving organizational change, and evaluating whether a leadership role would suit you. It has been great to see the group consolidate and to have members share their experience with others facing similar situations. If you are a CYGNA member and interested in joining us feel free to contact Ciara.

Conference & informal meet-ups

Our CYGNA meet-ups were more popular than ever. We had no less than eight this year!

CYGNA collaborations and IWD

This year, we also started documenting the many collaborations that are happening within the CYGNA network. So far two have been written up, but we are hoping to feature more in the coming years. We have also added a second post to celebrate International Women’s Day, an initiative started by Christa Sathish in March 2024. This year’s contribution was written by Tina Miedtank.

Related video

Related pages

  • About Cygna - Background on the CYGNA network
  • Quick overview - Overview of presentations in our meetings with linked slidedecks
  • Meetings - Information about forthcoming CYGNA meetings, and links to prior years
  • Membership - Information for and about the Cygna network membership
  • Readings and inspirations - Inspirational readings and resources for female academics
  • The Cygna charter - Documents our CYGNA charter
  • Cygna videos - Repository of introduction videos of our new CYGNA coordination team
  • Cygna history - Tracing the history of our network since 2014, includes links to all of our meetings
  • Frequently asked questions - Everything you may want to know about the CYGNA network and more
  • The SWAN project - Initiated by Christa Sathish and Clarice Santos and implemented by Jacqueline Leon Ribas, this project created two swans reflecting CYGNA’s equal, inclusive, collective identity and the diversity of the network and its members
  • Conference meet-ups - Provides brief write-ups of CYGNA conference meet-ups
  • 10-year Anniversary event - Programme page for our 10-year anniversary event
  • International Women's Day - Our collection of posts for international women's day
  • CYG: Teaching & Scholarship Research - Our first CYG = SIG = Special Interest Group
  • CYG: Career stage CYGs - Introductory page for our new career stage CYGs
  • Cygna Writes - Introductory page for our new CYGNA Writes initiative - Writing in Community, Achieving in Silence
  • Cygna Collaborations - Reports on some of the many collaborations our swans have engaged in across the CYGNA network

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Copyright © 2025 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Sun 5 Oct 2025 12:11

Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.

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