DrNichola Calvani

Nichola is deeply committed to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) and has actively promoted gender equity through the establishment of 'Herminthology' in 2021. Herminthology, a social media initiative and website, highlights and supports women working in parasitology. Through this platform, Nichola has profiled over 140 women from 35 countries in 19 languages to date. Nichola has conducted influential research on barriers faced by women in STEM, culminating in a publication featured in the February 2023 issue of Trends in Parasitology. This work received notable recognition, with the journal's cover featuring the first 100 women profiled by Herminthology in celebration of the International Day for Women and Girls in Science, which has been viewed over 38,000 times to date. 

In August 2022, Nichola organised a symposium on gender equity and parasitology during ICOPA XV, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, that covered various aspects of gender equity in the field of parasitology. Based on this symposium, Nichola and a colleague from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, Dr. Esther Kanduma, launched the 'Equity in Parasitology' (EQUIP) scholarships. This scholarship, supported by Elsevier, the W.A.A.V.P., and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (via the W.A.A.V.P. African Network), provides funding for four women from low- or middle-income countries (LMICs) the opportunity to attend an international parasitology conference each year. The 2023 winners supported women from a range of career stages (from MSc candidates through to Associate Professors) from Iran, Argentina, Cameroon and Uganda to attend the W.A.A.V.P. conference held in Chennai, India. In 2025, the four winners (from India, Bangladesh, Ghana and Nigeria) attended the Joint Spring Parasitology Meeting of the British, German and Swiss Societies for Parasitology, held in Wurzburg, Germany. 

Nichola has been invited to discuss the topic of gender equity in STEM at several institutions globally. In early 2023, she recorded a podcast episode for The Lancet: Microbe discussing the challenges women face in academia. The episode was released on March 8th, 2023, in celebration of International Women's Day. In August 2023, she was invited to the Wellcome Centre for Anti-infectives Research (WCAIR) at the University of Dundee, Scotland, to discuss barriers facing women ECRs and pathways forward. Later that month, she was invited to give a Keynote talk on EDI at the 29th W.A.A.V.P. meeting in Chennai. At this meeting, she was awarded the Odile Bain Memorial Prize for her work on the ecology, evolution and diagnosis of Fasciolosis and for her contributions towards gender equity in the discipline of parasitology and broader STEM fields. She was subsequently invited to give a talk to the European College of Veterinary Parasitology on the importance of EDI to the field of Veterinary Parasitology in March 2024. In Australia, she has been invited to deliver seminars on gender equity in parasitology and STEM at several high schools as well as at the annual Australian Society for Parasitology summer course, held on Stradbroke Island, Queensland, in November 2023. In June 2026, Nichola will be joining a symposium on Global Parasitology: Gender perspectives and International Inclusive Cooperation (WIP2.0) at the upcoming congress of the Italian Society for Parasitology, where she will be presenting a talk titled 'Beyond the Binary: Gender, Leadership, and the EDI Evolution in the W.A.A.V.P.'.

She is the co-chair of the EDI committee of the World Association for the Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology (WAAVP), where she actively advocates for greater inclusion within the discipline.