News

Hazel Johnstone - in loving memory

It is with profound sadness that we remember the life and work of our friend and colleague, Hazel Johnstone, who died on 14th March. Read Mary Evans' tribute here.

Dr Hasret Cetinkaya Published in Feminist Legal Studies

Cetinkaya's open access article 'The Coloniality of Contemporary Human Rights Discourses on ‘Honour’ in and Around the United Nations' has been published in Feminist Legal Studies and is available here.

Dr Sadie Wearing Published in Critical Dementia Studies

Wearing's chapter 'Frames of Dementia, grieving otherwise in The Father, Relic and Supernova: Representing dementia in recent film' will be published in the 1st edition of the book Critical Dementia Studies: An Introduction on 15 March, 2023. Access it here.

NEW Programme: MSc Gender, Rights & Human Rights 

Here by popular demand, the newest degree track in the Department of Gender Studies is now accepting applications for September 2023. 

Learn more about the programme here.

Welcome Professor Irina Zherebkina 

The Department of Gender Studies and the Scholar at Risk Programme at LSE are delighted to announce that Professor Irina Zherebkina has been awarded a British Academy Researcher at Risk Fellowship from March 2023. 

Read more about her and the work she will be doing here.

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship - Apply Now

We are now accepting ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship applications - deadline of 1pm on Friday February 24, 2023. You will need to make contact with your prospective mentor first.

For any Department queries see here and email Dr Kate Steward at k.steward@lse.ac.uk but see here for more queries about the Scheme.

Dr Pandit wins Feminist Theory Essay Prize

We are pleased to congratulate LSE Fellow and Gender Studies graduate Dr. Niharika Pandit on winning the 2022 Feminist Theory Essay Prize for her article “Re-membering: Tracing Epistemic Implications of Feminist and Gendered Politics Under Military Occupation”. Her work, which will be published in Feminist Theory in 2023,  focuses on contrasting approaches to feminist organizing in Kashmir and the relationship between feminist theory, governmentality, and decolonial praxis. 

Methodologies for Imagining an Alternative Politics of (Human) Rights

The Call for Papers for this workshop is now available and submissions are due on 1 February 2023. This event will take place on 12 June 2023 at LSE and will include a keynote lecture by Professor Nikita Dhawan (TU Dresden)

Statement on Recent Media Reports

Professor Wendy Sigle's statement on recent media coverage concerning the Department of Gender Studies can be found here. 

The AHRC funded project Transnational 'Anti-Gender' Movements and Resistance: Narratives and Interventions is launched

We are delighted to announce that the Arts & Humanities Research Council funded Transnational 'Anti-Gender' Movements and Resistance: Narratives and Interventions project, led by Professor Clare Hemmings and Professor Sumi Madhok, has launched today. For further details of the project, please click here.

LSE Gender Prize Winners 2022

We're thrilled to share details of prizes, awards and nominations for LSE Gender faculty and PhD researchers this year, including the LSESU Award for Departmental Excellence.

AHRC funding for our new research network

We're delighted to announce that two of our Professors, Clare Hemmings and Sumi Madhok, have been awarded an Arts & Humanities Research Council network grant for Transnational 'Anti-Gender' Movements and Resistance: Narratives and Interventions

Locating Sex Work in Conversations on Care Symposium 

The Call for Papers for this hybrid symposium is now available. This event will take place online and in-person at LSE on 27th May 2022, and is part of The Sociological Review Seminar Series. 

Registration to attend online is now open 

Death World(ing)s - online conference 10th June

The Call for Papers for this year's LSE Gender Annual Conference, Death World(ing)s, is now available. The CfP is available here and more details on the conference here.

Statement of solidarity with all affected by war

We, the undersigned, stand in support of and in solidarity with our Ukrainian students and colleagues and express our concern for all Ukrainians. Read more here.

March 2022

Dr. Amal Treacher Kabesh

It is with great sadness we collectively remember and pay tribute to the life and work of Dr. Amal Kabesh, who died this week aged 67. Read more here.

January 2022

Statement of solidarity with the organisers of the Aurat March in Pakistan

In recent weeks, a vicious disinformation campaign has been launched in online spaces against the Organisers of the Aurat March in Pakistan, after they organized peaceful rallies and events in different parts of the country on the occasion of 8 March, International Women’s Day this year.

We are extremely concerned, and we call on feminist scholars, activists and allies to raise their voices in solidarity with Aurat March in Pakistan.

March 2021

A World In Revolution
10 June 2021 
Online Conference - Call for Proposals

Submissions are due on March 7, 2021. We will aim to notify all applicants by April 16, 2021. Please email your queries and abstracts to: aworldinrevolutionconference@gmail.com

The Department of Gender Studies invites proposals for a two-day interdisciplinary workshop on 'the urgency of conceptual diversity', to be held in June 2021.

Deadline for submissions has now passed. For information on the workshop please email gender@lse.ac.uk. 

Response to the reported plans by the UK Government to dismiss the reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004

We at the Department of Gender Studies unequivocally state our collective support for trans and non-binary people. We reaffirm our commitment to trans and non-binary rights and will continue to strongly support efforts to resist such clear violations of human dignity.  

June 2020

Solidarity With Our Students Against Racial Injustice

Our response to the racist killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor in the US, and the continued and systemic brutality of the police deployed to quash anti-racist protests.

June 2020

COVID-19: Reflections on the Pandemic
Our faculty and PhD students are writing about the politics of COVID-19.

June 2020

UCU Strike: Solidarity in Times of Crisis
The Department of Gender Studies stands in solidarity with colleagues participating in the UCU industrial action over pay, workload, equality, casualisation.

February 2020

Haunting Feminism: Encounters with Lesbian Ghosts
A special issue of Feminist Theory edited by Ilana Eloit and Clare Hemmings

February 2020

Turkish Constitutional Court rules that the convictions of Academics for Peace violate their rights 

January 2020

LSE Values in Practice Awards (VIP) 2018/19 - Winners Announced. 

Intersectionality and Politics: an interactive workshop with Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw

LSE Excellence in Education Awards 2018 - Winners Announced.

CEU Reiterates Opposition to the Removal of Gender Studies Programmes in Hungary

See also an Engenderings blog post on the history of similar attacks in Brazil from last year 

Response to the Government's consultation on the Gender Recognition Act 2004

Please read this statement by The Department of Gender Studies, LSE - 18th October 2018. 

For more information and to give your views on the consultation, click here 

The Times Higher this week reported on the Hungarian Government pushing forward with its plans to ban Gender Studies Masters programmes at both ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences and the Central European University (CEU). This is a clear attack on academic freedom that the Department of Gender Studies condemns. Gender Studies is an internationally recognised area of interdisciplinary study and its targeting is clearly ideological. 

There have been a range of such attacks on Gender Studies programmes, faculty teaching in the field, and individuals who are gender non-conformist across Europe, in the US and in Latin America in recent years. These attacks are aligned with right-wing populist agendas that naturalise power relations between men and women and see women only as home-makers and carers. Such attacks link anti-migrant, racist, homophobic and sexist ideologies in the promotion of undemocratic, nationalist agendas and should be strongly resisted.

See an Engenderings blog post  on the history of such attacks in Brazil from last year 

And please sign this university teachers' petition:

Clare Hemmings writes:

"The Department of Gender Studies was delighted to be able to offer a week-long intensive course for PhD students across the LSE, from SOAS, UCL and Goldsmiths on ‘Intersectional Politics’ in May. 

This experimental course featured the work of our Centennial Professor, Kimberlé Crenshaw, who developed the concept of ‘intersectionality’ in a Critical Legal Studies context in the late 1980s. The course allowed students to follow the development of both Prof. Crenshaw's work and the many 'lives of intersectionality' since its inception. Students were delighted to engage in seminar discussions of texts, listen to lectures, and develop group and individual projects based on their own research. 

There were several things that stuck out for me as memorable. First was Prof. Crenshaw's generosity in talking to and engaging student projects over the week as a whole. Second was the importance of bringing together research students from across the LSE (from Gender, Media, Social Policy, Sociology and Geography) with students in Sociology and Media from Goldsmiths, Architecture from UCL, and Gender Studies from SOAS: this really made for a fruitful engagement and was a testimony to the value of reaching beyond institutional boundaries. Third was the hospitality of the PhD Academy, who offered their lovely space for the week long course, provided a reception and lunches, and were on hand to deal with any problems. 

Many thanks to all involved with the course at design, research and delivery levels, particularly Hazel Johnstone (Gender) and Loraine Evans (PhD Academy). "

LSE Students' Union Teaching Excellence Awards 2018

These awards allow students to nominate and celebrate the staff who have made a difference and enhanced their experiences during their time at LSE.

The awards this year led to over 900 individual nominations, with over 400 members of staff being nominated in 7 categories of awards. After careful consideration the panel has recognised 1 winner, 2-5 runners-up and 4-10 highly commended staff members in each category.

We are proud to announce and congratulate the following members of Faculty that have been recognised from our Department:

•  Runner up in the Award for Sharing Subject Knowledge - Aisling Swaine
• Highly Commended in the Award for Excellent Feedback and Communication - Ania Plomien
• Runner up in the Award for Research Guidance and Support - Jacob Breslow
• Highly Commended in the Award for Inspirational Teaching - Clare Hemmings and Jacob Breslow

 In the picture to the left, you can see the Winners of the Best Teacher Award for their teaching of the GI424 Gender Theory Course.

• (Top L to R) Emma Spruce, Julia Hartviksen, Jacob Breslow, Jacqui Gibbs
• (Bottom L to R) Aiko Holvikivi, Aura Lehtonen 

Considering Emma Goldman - New Book by Clare Hemmings

In Considering Emma Goldman Clare Hemmings examines the significance of the anarchist activist and thinker for contemporary feminist politics. see more

Clare will be discussing and launching her new book on Friday 27th April  5:30 - 7:00pm, LSE 

Read a review of the of the publication here

Read an interview with the Author here 

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Conflict-Related Violence against Women -  New Book by Aisling Swaine

By comparatively assessing three conflict-affected jurisdictions (Liberia, Northern Ireland and Timor-Leste), Conflict-Related Violence against Women empirically and theoretically expands current understanding of the form and nature of conflict-time harms impacting women. see more

Aisling will be launching her book as part of a panel discussion on Wednesday 25th April 6:30 - 8:00pm , LSE

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Under-represented, underpaid, and over-exploited: economic policy remains sexist - New Blog Article by Diane Perrons

Gender inequality exists in the UK, despite half a century’s worth of efforts to the contrary, argues Diane Perrons, co-director of the LSE’s Commission on Gender, Inequality and Power. She writes that the gender pay gap has declined, but men continue to be over-represented among full-time workers and in high-paid jobs, while women are at a greater risk of poverty. She argues that gender-sensitive macroeconomic policies and gender-responsive budgeting are some of the changes that will help avoid another century slipping by without us achieving gender equality.

UCU Strike: Solidarity in Times of Crisis

The Department of Gender Studies stands in solidarity with colleagues participating in the UCU industrial action over pensions

We support our striking colleagues because:

• We do not accept the proposed reductions in the value and security of pensions. This is an unnecessary attack on a shared good which will leave everyone who pays into the USS worse off, especially those at the beginning of their careers.
• We understand the issue of pensions (as well as pay) to be a gendered and intersectional matter affecting women and minorities more than other workers. Erosion of pension security disproportionately affects early career and precarious workers.
• We value the right to collective voice of university workers whose intellectual, pastoral, and administrative labour makes the very existence of the higher education sector possible.
• We back our colleagues and UCU in the call for employers to return to meaningful negotiations and lament the lack of political participation represented by LSE union members' failure to return their ballots. 

As part of this solidarity, we will not hold public lectures or research seminars on strike days.

Signed: Jacob Breslow, Helen Groves, Clare Hemmings, Marsha Henry, Hazel Johnstone, Naila Kabeer, Ece Kocabicak, Sumi Madhok, Anouk Patel-Campillo, Diane Perrons, Ania Plomien, Leticia Sabsay, Wendy Sigle, Emma Spruce, Kate Steward, Aisling Swaine and Sadie Wearing.

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New Advisory Committee Member

We are delighted to say that Imaobong Umoren is a new member of our Advisory Committee.

Imaobong is Assistant Professor of International History of Gender at the London School of Economics. She received her undergraduate and master’s degrees at King’s College London before moving to the University of Oxford where she gained her DPhil and spent a year serving as a Fulbright scholar at Harvard University. She subsequently took up a Career Development Fellowship jointly held with Pembroke College and the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities research programme Women in the Humanities. 

Imaobong Umoren’s research focuses on the history of race, gender, and migration in the Caribbean and wider African diaspora in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has published chapters in edited volumes and articles in Journal of Women’s History, Callaloo: A journal of African diaspora arts and letters, History Compass and History of Women in the Americas. Her first book about the international travels of a group of African American and Caribbean women intellectuals titled, Race Women Internationalists: Activist-Intellectuals and Global Freedom Struggles is due to be published in 2018 by the University of California Press.

Aisling Swaine participated in a research conference on “Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and the Worlds of Their Making” held at The George Washington University, Washington DC on January 19^th and 20^th.

The conference brought together a collection of academic authors for an edited book project which  specifically explores the relationship between the fields of human rights and humanitarianism through philosophical, historical, political science, legal and social science lenses. Aisling presented a paper, and forthcoming chapter, that maps the trajectory that the issue of violence against women (VAW) has taken through the development of these fields, identifying the productive tensions that arise in the areas of divergence and convergence in responses to VAW that are evoked in the space of a humanitarian crisis now commonly shared by human rights and humanitarian actors. Her paper examines who gets to decide whether a humanitarian or human rights response is priority in a particular scenario, the humanitarians, the human rights workers or women themselves?

We are delighted to announce various members of the faculty’s recently published work: 

On Vernacular Rights Cultures and the Political Imaginaries of Haq - Sumi Madhok

The Political Imaginary of Sexual Freedom - Leticia Sabsay

Cedaw and the security council: enhancing women's rights in conflict - Aisling Swaine

Considering Emma Goldman - Clare Hemmings

LSE Gender has a new Selected Media page

We have updated our new website with a number of new pages, including a 'Selected Media' page where we will place all LSE Gender-related media.

LSESU Award Wins for LSE Gender 

The Department of Gender Studies staff and PhDs won a number of awards in the 2017 LSESU Student-led Teaching Excellence Awards. We want to say a huge thank you to the students that nominated us!

Click here for more info.

The Persistence of Gender Inequality - New Book by Mary Evans 

In this engaging new book, Mary Evans argues that optimistic narratives of progress and emancipation have served to obscure long-term structural inequalities between women and men, structural inequalities which are not only about gender but also about general social inequality.

LSE Gender celebrate International Women’s Day and Support the Global Women’s Strike, March 8^th 2017!

Click above to read the statement by Clare Hemmings, Director of the Department of Gender Studies, and LSE Library's bold women project.

Congratulations to our LSE Gender Excellence In Education Award Winners!

LSE’s Excellence in Education Awards are made to staff who have demonstrated outstanding teaching contribution and educational leadership in their departments. In this series, we talk to some of this year's award winners to find out more about their excellent teaching and the different approaches they take to working with students.

Professor Diane Perrons, LSE Gender            

Professor Wendy Sigle, LSE Gender            

Dr Sadie Wearing, LSE Gender           

Dr Ania Plomien, LSE Gender 

Academics abroad: Dr Sumi Madhok gave one of the keynote lectures The Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET) conference in Lund on “Modern Matters: Negotiating the Future of Everyday Life in South Asia” on Wednesday 21 September entitled “Is a Non-Hegemonic Human Rights Talk Possible?”