Events

Department of Gender Studies

If you have any questions about our Events Programme, please get in touch with our Communications and Events Manager, Violet Fox, at v.fox@lse.ac.uk.

Autumn Term

Ania Plomien

Social Reproduction: struggles for and visions of justice

Wednesday 20 September 2023, 3.30-5pm, CKK.LG.08. Followed by a drinks reception.

Speaker: Dr Ania Plomien (LSE Gender)

Chair: Prof Sumi Madhok (LSE Gender)

This event is the 2023 Annual Welcome Lecture for incoming and continuing LSE Gender students and affiliated faculty ONLY. Please do not attend if you are not one of the above as there is limited space.

Watch the recording here.

 

Melissa Johnston

Building Peace, Rebuilding Patriarchy: The Failure of Gender Interventions in Timor-Leste

Wednesday 27 September, 12:00pm - 1:15pm

Speaker: Dr Melissa Johnston (University of Queensland)

Chair: Prof. John Sidel (LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre)

Men and women do not experience war, violence, and peace in the same ways. Accordingly, peacebuilding interventions now incorporate “gender mainstreaming” and stand-alone “gender-and-development” programming. These gender interventions should make peacebuilding more effective and sustainable, facilitating stable societies and efficient economies, but results have been mixed. In this seminar, Dr Melissa Johnston (University of Queensland) will explore outcomes for people on the ground in the instructive case of Timor-Leste.

This hybrid event is co-hosted with the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre.

 

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Twelve Feminist Lessons of War with Cynthia Enloe

Wednesday 18 October 2023, 6-8:30pm, Shaw Library, Old Building

Speakers: Professor Cynthia Enloe (Clark University) & Dr Amanda Chisholm (King's College)

Chair: Dr Marsha Henry (LSE Gender)

Twelve Feminist Lessons of War draws on firsthand experiences of war from women in places as diverse as Ukraine, Myanmar, Somalia, Vietnam, Rwanda, Algeria, Syria, and Northern Ireland to show how women's wars are not men's wars. With her engaging trademark style, Cynthia Enloe demonstrates how patriarchy and militarism have embedded themselves in our institutions and our personal lives.

This event is open to the public and free, but registration is required. See event listing for more information.

Watch the recording here.

 

RHUL Partner Event

The Politics and Possibilities of Feminist Knowledge Production

Friday 10 November 2023, 2-4:30pm, Stewart House, Royal Holloway University of London

Speakers: Dr Kat Gupta (RH), Dr Kavita Maya (RH), Dr Aiko Holvikivi (LSE Gender), Dr Sadie Wearing (LSE Gender)

Chair: Laura Sjoberg (RH)

This event brings together a panel of speakers from the LSE Department of Gender Studies and the Gender Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London, in conversation about the contours of feminist knowledge production and representation in different social, political, material and institutional contexts.

This event is open to the public and free, but registration is required. See event page for more information and registration details.

 

POI Adrift screening

Film Screening and Panel Discussion on Contested Belonging and Citizenship in Pakistan

Wednesday 22 November 4.00-6.15pm

Speakers: Dr Humera Iqbal (UCL), Jawad Sharif (Film Director), Dr Mahvish Ahmad (LSE Sociology)

Chair: Dr Maria Rashid (LSE Gender)

LSE Gender and LSESU Pakistan Development Society in collaboration with the Partition of Identity (POI) Project (UCL) invite you to a film screening of Bhashaili (Adrift). Directed by Jawad Sharif, the film tells the story of Pakistani Bengalis living in Karachi (Pakistan) many of whom face issues around citizenship and statelessness. A panel discussion on contested belonging and identity-making in Pakistan, as a legacy of war and violence will follow, including a Q&A with the film’s director.

This event is open to the public and free, but registration is required here

 

Winter Term:

jasmin young high res

Ready to Start a Revolution: Radical women in the Black Liberation Struggle

Wednesday 14 February 5.30-7.00pm, Yangtze Theatre 2.01, Centre Building and Zoom

Speaker: Dr Jasmin A Young (UC Riverside)

Chair: Dr SM Rodriguez (LSE Gender)

This presentation centers on the Black Women’s Liberation Committee (BWLC), an SNCC caucus established in 1968 that evolved into the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA). Dr Young traces and analyzes how the TWWA organized, trained, and developed Third World women to fight capitalism and start a revolution.

TWWA directly challenged the discourse of masculinity that permeated much of the Black Power movement. While some groups designated men as warriors for the revolution and formed all-male cadres, TWWA members believed women could play a significant role in armed struggle. They identified Black and Third World women as one of the most revolutionary forces confronting the U.S. ruling class. The TWWA assumed that women were capable and valuable members of the Black liberation struggle—and central to the fight for freedom. Drawing on Triple Jeopardy, the TWWA newspaper, archival materials and oral histories Dr Young discusses the group’s revolutionary feminist vision.

This is a featured event of our alumni series, demonstrating the reach of LSE Gender MSc's who go on to do their PhDs.

This event is free and open to the public but registration is required. 

 

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Transnational 'Anti-Gender' Politics and Resistance

Thursday 22 Feb 5.30-7.30pm: Judith Butler and Tooba Syed - watch the recording

Friday 23 Feb 5.30-7.30pm: zethu Matebeni and Alyosxa Tudor - recording coming soon

Transnational 'Anti-Gender' Movements and Resistance: Narratives and Interventions is a project led by Professors Clare Hemmings and Sumi Madhok of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). It is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and LSE Knowledge Exchange and Impact. This research network maps the narrative building blocks – the political grammars, conceptual vocabularies, rhetoric, figures, and temporalities – of both ‘anti-gender ideology’ interventions and the political struggles and solidarities engendered in resistance. 

This 2-Day Conference is the final event for the network, and is organised by Clare Hemmings, Sumi Madhok, Alyosxa Tudor and Senel Wanniarchchi. For more information about previous workshops, network members, and aims of the project, please visit the dedicated webpage here

 

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How can we deliver a gender-inclusive climate transition in India? 

Thursday 29 February 11.00am-12.30pm (BST) virtual

Speakers: Reema Nanavaty, Dr Garima Sahai, Dr Suravee Nayak, Dr Sohini Kar, Dr. Swayamprabha Das

Chair: Professor Naila Kabeer (LSE Intl Development)

Our panel aims to highlight and address the critical role of gender inclusivity in India's climate transition, providing actionable insights for researchers and stakeholders to identify key areas for building women's resilience and participation in a greener, more equitable future. The panel will discuss: gender segregation in the current labour market and new green job opportunities; the role of women working in the coal economy and strategies for a just transition; the barriers to women's access to climate finance. There will also be an opportunity for audience Q&A before we close the online event. 

This event is co-hosted by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Department of Gender Studies. 

 


Radhika Balakrishnan

Gender, policy and human rights: rethinking ‘progress’

Tuesday 5 March 4.30-6.00pm, Graham Wallace Room (OLD)

Speaker: Professor Radhika Balakrishnan (Rutgers)

Chair: Professor Naila Kabeer (LSE Intl Development)

In this talk, Radhika argues for a new conception of progress – a deeper understanding of the relationship between economic growth, human wellbeing, environmental sustainability and social justice, particularly gender justice. She proposes a paradigm shift that would make the fulfilment of human rights the central objective of public policy.

This LSE Internal event is co-hosted by the Department of International Development and the Department of Gender Studies.

 

Theory Saves Lives 16x9

LSE Gender 30th Anniversary Alumni Panel

Wednesday 6 March, 4-5.30pm GMT - Zoom (registration required)

Speakers: Prof Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen (UiS, Norway); Dr Carolina Alonso Bejarano, (Warwick); Dr Cynthia Citlallin Delgado Huitrón (Pace University); Dr Chloe Alexander (Birmingham)

Chair: Dr Ania Plomien

This event highlights the brilliant work of former MSc students that can both serve as inspiration to our current and recent cohorts, as well as feature the distinct quality of scholarship that our MSc alumni have generated years after completing their programmes and gone on to complete PhDs elsewhere. 

This is an LSE internal event and is not open to the public.

 

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Legacies of the Brixton Black Women's Group

Wednesday 13 March, 6.30-8.00pm, Marshall Building 2.04. followed by a reception

Speakers: Lola Olufemi (Westminster), Jade Bentil (Oxford), Oumou Longley, Dr Milo Miller (LSE Gender)

Chair: Dr SM Rodriguez (LSE Gender)

Established in response to the lack of interest in women’s issues in male-dominated Black organisations in Britain, the trail-blazing Brixton Black Women’s Group was founded to create a distinct Black socialist feminist space where women of African and Asian descent could meet to focus on and organise around political, social and cultural issues as they affected Black women.

Following on from the publication of Speak Out!, a landmark collection edited by Dr Milo Miller (LSE Gender) which brings together the writings of the Brixton Black Women’s Group for the first time, this panel reflects on the legacies of the group 50 years after its founding

This event is free and open to the public but requires registration. 

 

Judith Butler low res

Who's Afraid of Gender? 

Wednesday 20 March 7-8.30pm in-person and online- public in-person tickets will be released 12 March

Speaker: Professor Judith Butler (UC Berkeley)

Chair: Professor Sumi Madhok (LSE Gender)

Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose work has redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed ‘anti-gender ideology movements’ dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilization – and even ‘man’ himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to abolish reproductive justice, undermine protections against violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights. But what, exactly, is so disturbing about gender?

In this vital, courageous book, Butler carefully examines how ‘gender’ has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations and trans-exclusionary feminists, and the concrete ways in which this phantasm works. An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who's Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to make a broad coalition with all those who struggle for equality and fight injustice.

This event is free and open to the public but will require registration.

 

Moon Charania

Archive of Tongues: An Intimate History of Brownness

Wednesday 27 March 6.00-7.30pm, Marshall Building 1.04 

Speaker: Dr Moon Charania (Spelman College)

Chair: Dr Emrah Karakus (LSE Gender)

In Archive of Tongues, Moon Charania explores feminine dispossession and the brown diaspora through a reflection on the life of her mother. Drawing on her mother’s memories and stories of migration, violence, sexuality, queerness, domesticity, and the intimate economies of everyday life, Charania conceptualizes her mother’s tongue as an object of theory and an archive of brown intimate life. By presenting a mode of storytelling that is sensual and melancholic, piercing and sharp, Charania recovers otherwise silenced modes of brown mothers’ survival, disobedience, and meaning making that are often only lived out in invisible, intimate spaces, and too often disappear into them. In narrating her mother’s tongue as both metaphor for and material reservoir of other ways of knowing, Charania gestures to the afflictions, limits, and failures of feminist, queer, and postcolonial scholarly interrogations and the consequences of closing the archive of the brown mother.

This event is free and open to the public but will require registration. 


 Spring Term:

 

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The End of Peacekeeping 

Wednesday 1 May, 5.30-7pm The Marshall Building 1.04

Speakers: Professor Marsha Henry (Queen's Belfast/LSE); Professor Clare Hemmings (LSE Gender); Professor Armine Ishkanian (LSE AFSEE); Dr Denisa Kotsovicova (LSE European Inst)

Chair: Professor Sumi Madhok (LSE Gender)

The End of Peacekeeping makes use of feminist, postcolonial, and anti-militarist frameworks to expose peacekeeping as an epistemic power project in need of abolition. Drawing on critical concepts from Black feminist thought, and from postcolonial and critical race theories, Professor Henry shows how contemporary peacekeeping produces gender and racial inequalities through increasingly militarized strategies. She uses an intersectional analysis of peacekeeping based on more than fifteen years of ethnographic fieldwork in peacekeeping missions and training centres around the world, including interviews with UN peacekeepers, humanitarian aid personnel, and local populations. Revealing that peacekeeping is not the benign, apolitical project it is often purported to be, the book encourages readers to imagine and enact alternative futures to peacekeeping.

This event is being co-hosted with the LSE Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (AFSEE). It is free and open to the public but will require registration. 

 

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Breaking Silos: building solidarities in gender research

Friday, 3 May 2024 at the LSE Campus 

The Breaking Silos Conference, celebrated as part of LSE Gender’s 30th Anniversary, proposes to create a space of solidarity and collaborative, localized, interdisciplinary knowledge-production that reaches beyond disciplinary and academic boundaries, and creates opportunities for collective learning and collaboration, as we address these mounting challenges.

We extend an invitation to PhD students and early-career researchers from all research disciplines in any of the universities in greater London, as well as London-based practitioners, activists and community organizers, to submit proposals by 10 February 2024 and attend the conference on 3 May 2024 at the LSE Campus in Central London.

 

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LSE Gender Studies: 30 years and beyond

Friday 10 May 9.30am-7.30pm, Sheikh Zayed Theatre (CKK)

The Department of Gender Studies symposium will celebrate 30 years of interdisciplinary, critical, transnational and intersectional gender research and teaching at the LSE. Departmental faculty will participate in panel discussions with gender scholars from around the world on themes ranging from 'Archives and Contemporary Gender Politics', 'Care and Reproductive Justice', 'Identity, Sexuality and Rights', and 'Security'. Speakers include Anjali Arondekar, Elizabeth Bernstein, Toni Hasstrup, Marsha Henry, Shirin Rai, Tracey Reynolds, Juana Maria Rodriguez, SM Rodriguez, C Riley Snorton, Wendy Sigle and more.

More information will be coming soon and will be updated on the ticketing page. In the meantime, please take a look at our dedicated 30th Anniversary webpage.

 

 

 

Associated Events:

These events may feature LSE Gender faculty and visitors but are not hosted by the Department of Gender Studies. For more information you will need to contact the hosting department or institution.

Autumn Term

 

sharmila parmanand

Navigating ethical issues in participatory research

Wednesday 11 October, 12 noon to 1.30pm, Kingsway 3.02

Dr Sharmila Parmanand (Department of Gender Studies) introduces ethical and methodological issues in Participatory Action Research across various stages of the research process, from developing and designing the research until after the research formally ends. The session invites reflection on ways to build more reciprocity between academics and our research partners, especially in relation to research directions, recruitment of participants, ownership of the research, and power and representation. Sign up for the session

If you would like to find out more, please contact Louise Jones and Rosemary Deller at research.kei@lse.ac.uk

This is an internal event for LSE staff, students and faculty hosted by the LSE Knowledge Exchange and Impact office as a part of their Participatory Research workshop series.

 

Beyond Radical event

Rethinking 'Radicality' in Queer Theory: Symposium and Networking Day

Monday 16 October 2023, 10-5pm BST, Univesity of Sussex

This 1-day event at the University of Sussex will invite all attendees to explore the changing contexts of ‘radicality’ in queer studies, analysing the losses and gains of such changes.

The invited speakers include: Sita Balani (QMUL), Dhiren Borisa (Sheffield/Jindal Global Law School), Oliver Davis (Warwick), Mijke van der Drift (RCA, London), Zeena Feldman (KCL), Clare Hemmings (LSE), Olu Jenzen (Brighton), Ben Nichols (Manchester), SM Rodriguez (LSE), Sam Solomon (Sussex), Alex Stoffel (QMUL/LSE)

This event is hosted at the University of Sussex by the research consortium 'Beyond Radical', for more information see here.

 

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Black feminism in Europe

Monday 30 October 2023, 6.30pm to 8.00pm BST

Speakers: Dr Mame-Fatou Niang, Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Carnegie Mellon University; Dr SM Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, Department of Gender Studies, LSE.

Chair: Professor Joanna Lewis, Director, LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security.

Hosted by the LSE European Institute and the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security

Venue: In-person and online public event (LSE campus venue TBA)

Find out more.

 

Pop@LSE

LSE PhD in Demography Showcase

Thursday 9 Nov 2023 6.00-7:30pm GMT - hybrid

The demography research group at LSE (Pop@LSE) offers PhD degrees in demography/population studies within the Department of Methodology and is holding a showcase event to give students an idea of what demography is, the diversity of paths that researchers have taken to studying it and funding opportunities. The showcase features four researchers at LSE who will share their story of how they chose to do a PhD in Demography and give a taste of what topics they are currently researching.

Professor Wendy Sigle will be one of the presenters at this showcase.

The presentations will take place from 6-7pm and will be followed by a short reception. Please register your attendance on Eventbrite using the link above.

 

Parnell

Engaging the global urban agenda: from the south

Wednesday 6 December 2023, 6.30 - 8pm, Hong Kong Theatre

Speaker: Professor Susan Parnell (University of Bristol)

Chair: Professor Claire Mercer (LSE)

Creating solutions to complex problems like gender inequality, informality, climate resilience or disease prevention, is the foundation of effective global governance.

This hybrid event is part of the Sylvia Chant Lecture Series and is co-hosted with the Department of Geography and Environment.

 

Winter Term:

SM Rodriguez

The Question of Enforcement: Anti- Homosexuality Legislation in Uganda and the Problem of Panoptic Policing

Tuesday 30 January 5-7pm, CG3- Main building (SOAS campus)

Speaker: Dr SM Rodriguez

This event is hosted by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Centre for Gender Studies

 

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Oxford Abolitionist Imaginaries and Praxis Discussion Series: Abolition and the Black Feminist Imagination 

Tuesday 6 February 4.15-5.30pm, Criminology Seminar Room at the Centre for Criminology, Oxford

Please join us for our first discussion of the term with S.M. Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of Gender, Rights, and Human Rights at the London School of Economics. Rodriguez’s research joins anti-carceral, Black, and trans feminist approaches to interrogate sex as a political projection unto the body and as an action, especially as related to criminal law and “correctional” practices. Centring African Diasporic people and places, they question global and transnational structures of racialisation, punishment, and movement-making.

This event is hosted by the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford.

 

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Sense of an Ending: Bringing participatory research projects to a close

Wednesday 6 March, 12.30-2pm, location given to attendees

Speaker: Dr Sharmila Parmanand (LSE Gender) 

As part of a participatory research workshop series running through Autumn Term 2023 and Winter Term 2024, this panel discussion reflects on the challenges of ‘‘ending’’ a participatory project in ways that are compatible with the commitments of participatory research. The panel will discuss the ethical uses and outcomes of participatory research, ways of achieving temporary closures rather than endings, navigating relational challenges, and the value of continuing rather than ending. The panel discussion will open into a Q&A for collective conversation. 

The session will include lunch and the opportunity to network with other researchers doing or interested in participatory research.

If you would like to find out more, please contact Louise Jones and Rosemary Deller at research.kei@lse.ac.uk

This is an internal event for LSE staff, students and faculty hosted by the LSE Knowledge Exchange and Impact office as a part of their Participatory Research workshop series.

sharmila parmanand

Ethics of care in sex work research: reflecting on scholar-activist collaborations

Thursday 7 March 3-5pm Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT), Russell Square: College Buildings, SOAS

Speakers: Dr Sharmila Parmanand (LSE Gender); Yukiko Kaname (SWASH); Gaymakimaki (SWASH); Lily Miyata; Chihiro Toya (SOAS)

This event will rethink difficult ethical questions in sex work research, including how research can benefit sex workers, what the significance of research by non-sex workers is, and how to think about the representation of sex workers in research/activism.
Researchers and SWASH (Sex Worker and Sexual Health) members will discuss the challenges and joys of collaborative research by reflecting on their experiences in the Philippines and Japan. SWASH is a Japanese sex worker rights organisation that aims to improve the health and safety of sex workers. Its members give lectures at universities and symposiums. SWASH co-authored the book Sex Work Studies (Nippon Hyron sha, 2018).

This event is being hosted by SOAS, registration is required.

 

Sumi HOD message

International Women's Day Lecture: Anti-imperial epistemic justice: Building solidaristic coalitions in a time of global crises

Friday 8 March, 12:15 PM - 1:00 PM Darwin Room, The Pitt Building, Cambridge University

In this International Women’s Day talk, I want to insist on the importance of building solidaristic coalitions for justice to counter the extreme imperial violence of our present. These solidaristic coalitions must be transnational and they must be premised on anti-imperial epistemic justice. Drawing on my current work on transnational anti-gender movements and resistance, and on rights politics in most of the world, I will outline some key elements of my thinking on the anti-imperial epistemic justice and what it means for building solidaristic gender politics in a time of global crises.

This event is being hosted by the Centre for Governance and Human Rights at Cambridge University. Please get in contact with them with any queries.

 

sharmila parmanand

International Women's Day - Exploring Gender & Philippine Labour Migration

Thursday 27 March 6-9pm Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT), Russell Square: College Buildings, SOAS

Speakers: Dr Sharmila Parmanand (LSE Gender); Louie Horne; Dr Joyce Jiang

Delve into the complex intersection of gender and Philippine labour migration, as we explore the experiences, challenges, and triumphs of Filipino women working abroad. This event aims to shed light on the unique perspectives and contributions of these women to the global workforce. Through engaging discussions, personal stories, and expert insights, we will deepen our understanding of the social, economic, and cultural dimensions of this important issue. Hear from inspiring speakers, connect with fellow attendees, and be part of a meaningful dialogue on gender equality and migration.

This event is being hosted by SOAS, registration is required.

 

 

Past Events:

2022/23

 

Alternatives to Human Rights Workshop

Workshop: Methodologies for Imagining an Alternative Politics of (Human) Rights

The Call for Papers submissions were due on 1 February 2023.

The event took place on 12 June 2023 at LSE and included a keynote lecture by Professor Nikita Dhawan (TU Dresden), which can be watched on the LSE Gender YouTube channel.

Access the full programme here, and the book of presentation abstracts here.

For more information about the research project please see our dedicated page 'Re-making Human Rights: Gender and Self-fashioning in the Political Imaginary of Rojava'.

 

Academic Freedoms

Academic Freedom and the Scholarship of Justice and Transformation 

Wednesday 18th January 2023, 5.30-7pm. 

There will be no event recording available, but please see Mary Evans' LSE Impact blog, The Possibilities of Nostalgia for Academic Freedom

This LSE Conversation brought together leading scholars who research and teach on questions of social and political transformation in contemporary times.

Speakers: Clare Hemmings (LSE), Niraja Gopal Jayal (LSE & King's College) and Mary Evans (LSE). Chair: Sumi Madhok (LSE)

 

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African Feminisms for Abolitionist Futures: the speculative geography of African women’s political dissent

Speaker: SM Rodriguez (LSE)

Chair: Aiko Holvikivi (LSE)

Watch a recording of the event on YouTube

 

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Transnational ‘Anti-Gender’ Movements and Resistance: narratives and interventions

Speakers: Judith Butler (University of California, Berkeley - online), Sonia Corrêa (Sexuality Policy Watch), Françoise Vergès (antiracist decolonial theorist and writer - online)
Chairs: Clare Hemmings (LSE) and Sumi Madhok (LSE)

Watch a recording of the event on YouTube - View 1 and View 2