When we planned this issue two of the topics were quite obvious: in fact, 2018 has been the year of the ICM in Rio and we had EWM General Meeting, held in Graz last September.

In Rio, for the first time, a day completely dedicated to women mathematicians, called (WM)², was organized in cooperation with ICM. This has been a remarkable event and we are very happy to publish interviews with Carolina Araujo (Impa, Rio) and Marie-Françoise Roy (Rennes), two of the organizers of (WM)².

The other big event for EWM was the General Meeting: we asked our Convenors Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb and Elena Resmerita to report on the event, and we interviewed Karin Baur (Graz and Leeds), the local organiser. Moreover, Sara Munday (Roma Tre) reported on the mini-symposium dedicated to music and mathematics.

In Graz, Naomi Ellemers (Utrecht) gave an invited talk on gender bias. In this issue, we have interviewed her to learn more about the subject. Her interview explains and clarifies aspects of bias in hiring processes and possible countermeasures.

To keep investigating the topic, we have interviewed Camilla Hollanti (Aalto): with her, we have also discussed how she managed to build a well-balanced workgroup; we have gathered reflections from some of her collaborators at the end of her interview.

Our other interviews focus on communicating maths: we have Constanza Rojas Molina (Düsseldorf) and her beautiful drawings and Gudrun Thäter (Karlsruhe), initiator of the widely popular podcast Modellansatz.

Last year also marked the 30th birthday of EWM and Eva Bayer (Lausanne) kindly sent her reminiscences of its beginning and the evolution of EWM and EMS.

As we usually do, we have collected reports of activities in various countries and travel reports: we have reports about the  2018 EWM-EMS Summer School at Mittag-Leffler Institute, the 2018 Women in Mathematics Day in Dublin,  the Women in Mathematical Material Science Workshop in Regensburg and the Women In Operator Algebras Workshop in Banff. Carina Geldhauser (Dresden) wrote about her participation in the Non-local PDEs and Probability Workshop  in Swansea.

Finally, news about the editorial team: a big welcome to Sema Coskun (Kaiserslautern), who has joined us. And a warm welcome to little Ada, Olga Kuznetsova’s newly born baby girl: we all wish you a life full of joy, Ada! 

Anna Maria Cherubini