(Updated September 2024)

Ester Cois, PhD in Comparative Social Research, is a Permanent Researcher in Environmental and Territorial Sociology at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Cagliari. She teaches Governance of Common Goods for the Master's Degree in Social Innovation and Communication and the Social Research module of the Integrated Course in Urban Planning and Economic and Social Evaluation for the Master's Degree in Architecture.

Since 2024, she has been President of the National Conference of Equality Bodies of Italian Universities (Counipar) and since 2021, she has been Pro-Rector Delegate for Gender Equality and President of the Guarantee Committee for Social Inclusion of the University of Cagliari. Since 2023, she has been the Coordinator and Scientific Director of the Interdepartmental Center for Research and Gender Studies (CEING) of the University of Cagliari. She is also a member of the Gender Issues sub-committee for the Gender Equality Plans of the National Conference of Italian Rectors (CRUI), a member of the CIRD (Interuniversity Teaching Research Center at the University of Cagliari and the University of Sassari), a member of the Scientific Council of the Interdepartmental Center "Cagliari Accessibility Lab", focused on promoting an inclusive approach for people with disabilities, and a member of the Teaching Board of the Doctorate Degree in Research and Social Innovation.

She held the role of Expert Scientific Consultant for the Social Policies area in the process of defining the Strategic Plan of the Metropolitan City of Cagliari. She contributed to defining, in 2020, the first Gender Equality Plan of the University of Cagliari as a member of the H2020 SUPERA research project (Supporting the Promotion of Equality in Research and Academia). She was the Italian Principal Investigator for the Erasmus+ project “SMILE” (Social Meaning Impact through LLL Universities in Europe), in the thematic area “Women in Leadership”, and is currently a member of the Working Group TIER (Towards an Inclusive Evaluation of Research) within the International Universities Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). As a member of the national subcommittee of the Conference of Italian Rectors (CRUI) for Gender Equality Plans, she contributed to defining the official national CRUI guidelines in 2021 for the drafting of Gender Equality Plans by all Italian Universities. She is currently a member and contact person for the Advisory Board on Equal opportunities, Inclusion and Diversity of EDUC Alliance (European Digital UniverCity), a network of eight European Universities, on the topics of “Youth Integration” and “Enhance key competences of researchers-Female empowerment”.

Since 2022, she has been an expert consultant for the European project “UNISafe” (Ending Gender-Based Violence. Gender-based violence and institutional responses: Building a knowledge base and operational tools to make universities and research organisations safe), against gender-based violence in academia, and for the European project CASPER (Certification-Award Systems to Promote Gender Equality in Research, Horizon 2020 Programme, Science with and for Society. Grant Agreement: 872113), aimed at introducing a university award certification system to promote gender equality in research excellence. She is currently co-referee for the University of Cagliari of two joint BIP Erasmus courses activated within the EDUC EU Alliance-European Digital UniverCity program: "Intercultural Sensitivity", between the University of Cagliari, the University of Pécs (Hungary) and the Pan-European University (Slovak Republic) and "Space & Place", in collaboration with the University of Paris-Nanterre (France) and Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic).

Since 2013 she has been Managing Editor of the Band A scientific journal "Sociologica, International Journal for Sociological Debate." Her current research interests focus on urban and rural sociology, with specific reference to gender and age inequalities in the use of public space and to gender and generational dynamics in the labor market (with a specific focus on the higher education sector) and in family choices.