By Natalie Alkiviadou
In the email signature of a former United Nations Special Rapporteur was a sentence that has stayed with me: “I do not join manels.” A “manel”, now widely defined as an all-male panel, is not simply descriptive. It reflects structural patterns in who is recognised as an expert and who is not. On 31 March 2026, the University of Cyprus is holding an event on the status and future of the Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs) in Cyprus. All speakers are male. Are there no female academics at the University of Cyprus who could speak? Are there no female experts in the field at all, especially given that the event is not limited to internal experts within the University, as the invitation of the former Attorney General of the Republic of Cyprus indicates? Clearly, this is not the case. Cyprus-based Dr. Nasia Hadjigeorgiou is widely recognised expert on the SBAs, yet she is not included in the event. That matters. The continued prevalence of all-male panels is indefensible in environments that value equality, expertise, and intellectual integrity.
Not available or not invited?
When there is an event in the field of law in Cyprus, I have occasionally reached out to organisers when I notice yet another all-male panel. With strong female candidates clearly in mind, I ask why only men appear to have been invited. The response I receive, almost without exception, is the same: no women were available.
This time, however, I took a different approach. I spoke directly to Dr. Hadjigeorgiou. Her answer was revealing. She was not invited. That exchange prompted me to reflect on all the previous occasions when organisers told me they had “tried” but found no women available. This recurring explanation becomes difficult to accept when strong and visible candidates are demonstrably overlooked.
Dr. Hadjigeorgiou is widely recognised as an expert on the SBAs in Cyprus. Her expertise is not abstract or marginal. She has written peer-reviewed academic articles, opinion pieces, given interviews, written reports, and presented conference papers on the matter. After the recent drone attack on an SBA base, she has been interviewed by, inter alia, The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Dutch Broadcasting Corporation, the Cyprus Mail and others. Yet, for an event in her hometown on a subject on which her expertise is obvious, she is not a speaker.
In this particular case, at least, the issue was clearly not one of availability. It was one of selection. UN Women has stressed that manels are not the result of a lack of qualified women. Rather, they reflect narrow networks and unconscious bias in the selection of experts. The data confirms this. A report by the Open Society Foundations shows that three out of four speaking roles at high-level conferences are occupied by men.
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Natalie Alkiviadou is a Senior Research Fellow at The Future of Free Speech. Her research interests lie in the freedom of expression, the far-right, hate speech, hate crime, and non-discrimination.