Initiatives

WIMIR started out as Women in MIR (WiMIR), which is a group of people within the International Society for Music Information Retrieval dedicated to promoting the role of, and increasing opportunities for, women in the MIR field. Recently, the scope and influence of WiMIR has expanded to wider diversity and inclusion initiatives as Widening Inclusion in Music Information Retrieval (WIMIR). 

WiMIR has held meetings at the ISMIR conference since 2011 in Miami. These meetings – initially taking place informally outside of the conference program, and since 2015 as a plenary session in the main program – have had a high turnout of attendees including women and allies in the field. These sessions have included invited keynote talks as well as discussions of important issues ranging from mentorship and conference travel grants to improving representation of women in the field.

The WiMIR Mentoring Program is a remote mentoring program that was initiated in 2016. In this program, women in the field are paired with more senior women or allies to discuss topics such as career development, technical research topics, work-life balance, and dealing with sexism. Signups for this program take place annually in the fall, with each mentor-mentee pair carrying out four virtual mentoring sessions between January and June.

The WiMIR Workshop was initiated in 2018 as a satellite event of the ISMIR conference. This annual event aims to provide a venue for mentorship, networking, and collaboration among women and allies in the ISMIR community. After in-person workshops co-located with the ISMIR conference in 2018 and 2019, the Workshop migrated to a virtual format starting in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are a number of ways to stay up-to-date on WiMIR news and events, and to get involved. WiMIR’s email list and Twitter account deliver announcements about ongoing initiatives and events, and enable community members to send and receive job postings and announcements. The WiMIR blog presents interviews with women in the field, summarizes community Diversity & Inclusion initiatives, and more. The Directory of WiMIR is an opt-in database of women in the field for those seeking keynote and invited speakers, reviewers, and conference committee members.