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22Oct

Mutually assured survival: feminist solidarities amidst planetary threats

Hosted by the Ralph Miliband Programme
In-person and online public event (Malaysia Auditorium, Centre Building)
Wednesday 22 October 2025 6.30pm - 8pm

We are beset by existential planetary threats - from environmental emergencies and public heath crises to grotesque inequalities and wars. Can global feminist solidarity and a feminist theory of social reproduction provide an emancipatory agenda that will foster the material conditions that make the reproduction of human and non-human life possible?

Meet our speakers and chair

Lyn Ossome (@lyn_ossome)is Associate Professor and Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University, and current president of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Her work is in the fields of feminist political economy and feminist political theory, with research interests in gendered labour, land and agrarian questions, the modern state, and the political economy of gendered violence. Her books include Gender, Ethnicity and Violence in Kenya’s Transitions to Democracy: States of Violence (2018) and a forthcoming monograph titled Democracy’s Subjections: Colonial Modernity and the Gendered Subject of Violence.

Shirin M Rai is Distinguished Research Professor of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London. She is Fellow of the British Academy and Academy of Social Sciences. She is a feminist political economist and author of Gender and the Political Economy of Development (Polity, 2004) and Depletion: the human costs of caring (OUP 2024)."

Gloria Novović is a lecturer in Public Policy in the School for Government at King’s College London (KCL). She holds a dual PhD in Political Science and International Development (University of Guelph, Canada). Working at the intersections of feminist political economy, political ecology, and public policy, she analyses global governance frameworks, particularly the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and transnational coalitions for planetary justice.

Sharmila Parmanand (@shaaarmila) is Assistant Professor in Gender, Development and Globalisation in the Department of Gender Studies at LSE. She is also an associate academic at the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and co-convenor of the Development Studies Association Women and Development Study Group.

More about this event

The Ralph Miliband programme (@RMilibandLSE) is one of the LSE's most prestigious public lecture series, receiving attention not only at the LSE but across London, the UK, and globally. The programme was set up in 1996 thanks to a generous anonymous benefaction from a former PhD student inspired by 'Ralph Miliband's contribution to social thought'. He specified that the funds be used in memory of his friend and mentor 'to advance his spirit of free social inquiry' and the diversity of thought that has always been the hallmark of LSE.

This event is supported by the Kings School for Government.

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Featured image (used in source code with watermark added): Photo by Tim Marshall via Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/hands-formed-together-with-red-heart-paint-cAtzHUz7Z8g

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