NEGOTIATED SEXUAL ETHICS AMONG WOMEN CONVERTING TO JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM IN THE NETHERLANDS
17 DECEMBER 2018: LIEKE SCHRIJVERS
Lieke Schrijvers is a cultural anthropologist and PhD candidate in religious studies and gender studies at the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies in Utrecht University, in a joint doctorate with the research centre for Culture and Gender at Ghent University. Her current research is a comparative anthropological study of female converts in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities in the Netherlands, and their negotiations of norms and guidelines relating to gender and sexuality.
SEARCHES AND REUNIONS BETWEEN NEPALESE ADOPTEES AND BIRTH FAMILIES
19 NOVEMBER 2018: CHANDRA KALA CLEMENTE MARTÍNEZ
Chandra Kala Clemente Martínez is Anthropologist (BA, MA) and PhD Candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology, as a Training Programme for Academic Staff Fellowship Holder, affiliated to AFIN Research Group in Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her research examines the origins in transnational adoption, paying special attention to the experiences of searches and reunions in adoptions between Spain and Nepal. It analyses adoptees’ and adoptive families’ interest in ‘origins’ and perceptions, motivations, challenges and results of ‘return journeys, as well as experiences of first families in relation to their children’s return. Altogether, her research explores connections and disconnections between adoptive and first families.
ICT4D, GENDER CULTURES AND THE MYTH OF DECENT WORK: YOUNG WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICAN CALL CENTRES
5 NOVEMBER 2018: SISA NGABAZA
Biography: Dr. Sisa Ngabaza teaches in the department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of the Western Cape. Her research interests focus on gender, youth, adolescent sexuality, adolescent pregnancy, parenting and power relations.
EMOTIONAL AND AFFECTIVE LABOUR IN PRACTICES OF MOM BLOGGING
15 OCTOBER 2018: KATARIINA MÄKINEN
Katariina Mäkinen is a postdoctoral researcher in gender studies in the University of Tampere. Her PhD research on work-related coaching traced the intersections of individualization and gender in the context of late capitalism, and was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Helsinki Collegium (2013-15) where she developed a project interrogating anti-immigration activism from the perspectives of neoliberal citizenship regimes and relations of class. Her current project, funded by the Academy of Finland, investigates mom blogging as a new form of gendered work.
EATING THE ADOPTEE: CULTURAL COMMODIFICATION, WHITENESS AND INTERRACIAL INTIMACIES IN BOLIVIAN-BELGIAN ADOPTION
20 JUNE 2018: CHRISTOF BEX
Christof Bex is a doctoral researcher at the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), affiliated to the Department of Languages and Cultures of Ghent University, and member of the Centre for Research on Culture and Gender. He obtained a master’s degree in Sociology (2015) and Gender and Diversity Studies (2016). He is currently doing a doctoral research on transnational adoption from Bolivia with a specific interest in race, whiteness, gender, kinship, motherhood and transnational care.
BLACK GERMAN WOMEN, THE MATRILINEAL DIASPORA AND AUDRE LORDE
11 JUNE 2018: CASSANDRA ELLERBE
Cassandra Ellerbe studied at the universities of Paris (VIII) in France, and the LMU in Munich, Germany (M.A) and has a PhD from Ghent University (2006) in Comparative Cultural Studies/Anthropology. She has worked as a researcher in various cross-border EU funded projects in the fields of ethnography, cultural studies, Black European studies, gender, intersectional theory, social justice, refugees and migrants, and diversity. Cassandra is a certified diversity/social justice and empowerment trainer for People of Color in Germany, and network member of the Black Diaspora in Germany Scholars Project funded by the German Research Foundation (2010-2014). She currently lectures at Bard College Berlin on issues related to social justice and diversity and conducts empowerment workshops for Black migrant and refugee women in Berlin.
KURDISH WOMEN AND THE LIMITS OF GAINING VOICE.
28 MAY 2018: MARLENE SCHÄFERS
Marlene Schäfers is a social anthropologist and currently FWO [PEGASUS]2 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Research Group at Ghent University, Belgium. She obtained a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2015 with a dissertation centering on the struggles for voice and audibility on the part of Kurdish women in Turkey. Her research focuses on the impact of state violence on intimate and gendered lives, the politics of memory and history, and the intersections of affect and politics. Her work has been published in the European Journal of Turkish Studies, Social Anthropologyand the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
NYAANYO, COURAGEOUS SISTERS, AND THE NGO: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF QUEER WOMEN AND TRANSNATIONALIZATION IN ACCRA, GHANA
16 APRIL 2018: HEATHER TUCKER
Heather’s PhD research is focused on an 8 month long ethnography about local knowledge systems in Accra, Ghana, regarding female same sex intimacy and the ways in which these are changing in relationship to technologies as well as NGOization (i.e. LGBT focused groups). She is a PhD candidate at the Gender Studies department at Central European University, with a focus in cultural anthropology. Heather is also a former visiting researcher at the University of Amsterdam, and a former research associate with: the Centre for Popular Education and Human Rights, in Accra; the Human Rights Centre in Accra; and the Refugee Law Project, in Kampala, Uganda. In addition, Heather works as a gender and sexuality consultant building on ethnographic insights on issues of intersectionality and capacity building for organizations in both the north and south.
MOTHERHOOD, VOLUNTARY CHILDLESSNESS AND CHRISTIANITY: NARRATIVES OF CHOICE
19 MARCH 2018: DAWN LLEWELLLYN
How do Christian women understand their reproductive choices? How do they navigate the religious expectation to have children at a time when more women are choosing not to become mothers? What personal, social, and institutional factors feature in women’s decision-making regarding motherhood and childlessness? How do women interpret the ways motherhood is enshrined in scripture, doctrine, teaching, and everyday Church practices? This paper draws on a current project examining the discourses and practices of ‘choice’ towards motherhood or elective childlessness in contemporary Christianity. Using a narrative approach (Bold 2012; Ellis 2004) I conducted interviews with Christian women about the process of considering motherhood and childlessness, the impact that reproductive agency has on women’s faith development, and the potential tensions of these ‘choices’ in a family-affirming tradition.
Dawn Llewellyn is Senior Lecturer in Christian Studies at the University of Chester. She is the author ofReading, Feminism, and Spirituality: Troubling the Waves (Palgrave, 2015); has co-edited Religion, Equalities and Inequalities (Routledge, 2016) with Sonya Sharma and Reading Spiritualities (Ashgate, 2008)with Deborah F. Sawyer.