The Senior Academic Leadership Initiative (SALI) was launched by the then Minister for Higher Education in 2019 following analysis carried out by Ireland’s Gender Equality Taskforce in 2018 revealed that 52 per cent of lecturers in higher education were female, but just 27 per cent of professors.
One of the Taskforce’s recommendations was the creation of new and gender-specific posts at appropriate levels that would create rapid and sustainable change in the representation of women in the senior professor grade. The scheme will provide funding for 45 prestigious senior leadership posts over three years.
Twenty of these posts were approved and filled in the first SALI cycle in 2020, and in November 2021, the Department for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science announced that it was approving a further 10 posts at senior level as part of the second SALI cycle.
The SALI scheme involved a competitive call for applications, open to Irish HEIs to apply for approval of posts under the scheme, and the call for proposals was managed by the Higher Education Authority (HEA), on behalf of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS).
The key objective of the SALI scheme is principally to attract outstanding female applicants both from within the sector currently and internationally to apply for senior academic positions in Irish HEIs.
Further details in relation to the SALI call can viewed in the {SALI Call for applications 2020}
SALI Cycle 2 Opportunities
Under the SALI second cycle, the following posts were approved across the universities.
| Institution | Post title |
| DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY | Full Professor in Sustainable Finance |
| MAYNOOTH UNIVERSITY | Professor of Intersectional Humanities |
| MAYNOOTH UNIVERSITY | Professor of Observational Astrophysics or Cosmology |
| NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, GALWAY | Established Professor of Chemistry |
| UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK | Professor of Quantum Technology |
| UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN | Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Engineering |
| UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN | Full Professor of Sustainability Geoscience |
| UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN | Full Professor of Sport and Exercise Physiology* |
| UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN | Full Professor in Sustainable Development* |
| UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK | Chair of Biochemical Engineering |
| UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK | Chair of Digital Engineering |
*Additional posts self-funded by University College Dublin to match their SALI allocation from the Higher Education Authority.
**The Technological University of Dublin was also awarded a post under SALI cycle 2, and this post (Professor of Innovation and Sustainability in Engineering, Construction and Built Environment) will be advertised at a later stage.