NOTUS

Their core work

NOTUS is a Barcelona-based research SME specialising in gender equality implementation within research and higher education institutions. Their core work involves designing and applying gender equality audits, developing Gender Equality Plans, and facilitating reflexive institutional change processes — helping universities and research organisations move from policy commitment to measurable practice. They also build and run communities of practice that connect research institutions across Europe to share learning, coordinate on gender dimension integration, and accelerate culture change. In practical terms, they are brought into consortia to provide the organisational diagnosis, process design, and monitoring frameworks that make gender equality initiatives concrete and trackable.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their earliest H2020 work (TARGET, 2017) focused on the diagnostic and measurement side of gender equality — auditing existing institutional conditions, building self-assessment tools, establishing monitoring frameworks, and theorising the reflexive learning processes organisations go through during change. By 2018 (ACT), the emphasis had shifted from diagnosis toward implementation and diffusion: communities of practice, institutional change as an active process, research careers, decision-making, and connecting individual institutions into a broader European Research Area effort. The trajectory is clear: NOTUS moved from designing the instruments for measuring gender equality gaps toward facilitating the collective learning processes that actually close them.

NOTUS is moving from institutional diagnosis toward networked change facilitation, positioning itself as a connector organisation that helps research institutions learn from each other — a profile well-suited to future projects focused on ERA policy implementation or RPO reform.

How they like to work

NOTUS joins projects as a partner and has never held the coordinator role across their two H2020 projects. They work in large, multinational consortia — 26 unique partners across 17 countries from just two projects suggests an average consortium size of roughly 13 partners each, which is substantial for CSA actions. This pattern indicates they are valued as a specialist contributor that brings specific methodological expertise (auditing, facilitation) to bigger initiatives, rather than an organisation that builds and drives its own project agenda.

NOTUS has built a network of 26 partners spanning 17 countries from only two projects, reflecting the inherently pan-European nature of gender equality reform work in research. Their connections are likely concentrated in universities, research-performing organisations, and science policy bodies across Western and Southern Europe.

What sets them apart

NOTUS occupies a niche that sits between academic gender studies and management consulting: they are a research SME that produces rigorous, evidence-based tools (audits, monitoring systems, GEPs) rather than generic advisory reports, while remaining small and agile enough to deploy those tools inside project consortia as an active participant. For a consortium building a Horizon project that needs to demonstrate genuine gender equality integration — not just a tick-box statement — NOTUS provides the methodological credibility and practical process know-how that few Barcelona-based SMEs can match. Their dual presence in both audit design (TARGET) and community-based diffusion (ACT) means they can contribute across the full cycle of institutional change, from diagnosis to sustained implementation.

Highlights from their portfolio

• TARGET
  NOTUS's largest project by funding (EUR 399,758) and the one that most directly showcases their core methodology — a reflexive, self-assessment-driven approach to gender equality transformation in research institutions.
• ACT
  Demonstrates NOTUS's ability to work at the European Research Area scale, using communities of practice to accelerate gender equality and institutional change across multiple research organisations simultaneously.