RHEA presents its yearly interuniversity gender research seminar: Feminist methodologies
The Interuniversity Gender Research Seminar is a yearly interdisciplinary course, jointly organized by VUB, UGent and UA. The Gender Research seminar offers PhD-students advanced training by renowned experts in research methods and topical issues in the field of gender and diversity studies. The focus of this year is Feminist Methodologies. Participation is free but registration required. The lectures are open for a broad public; the masterclasses are only for PhD-researchers. This year the even will take place online.
INFO & REGISTRATIE VIA RHEA
PUBLIC LECTURES
EMPIRICAL BIOETHICS AND FEMINISM: TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN – LECTURE BY ALEXIS PATON, CHAIR: MICHIEL DE PROOST
9 NOVEMBER 2020 – 10:00-11:30
Empirical bioethics and feminist approaches to the social sciences have developed with and out of each other over the last few decades. In this lecture, Alexis Paton reflects on the uses of empirical data and ethical theory in feminist theory & activism. She will discuss the development of empirical bioethics alongside feminist methodologies and theories. Using examples from her own empirical work on women with cancer making fertility preservation decisions, it is showed how these two approaches to bioethics work can come together to develop important theoretical insights on patient decision-making.
Prior to joining Aston in April 2020, Dr. Alexis Paton was a Lecturer in Social Sciences Applied to Health at the University of Leicester. She also held positions as a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Newcastle University, as a lecturer for Yale University’s Summer Institute in Bioethics, and as a research assistant at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on how sociological theory and qualitative research methods can be combined with bioethical frameworks to improve healthcare services.
The talk engages with the formative concepts of diversity and intersectionality as a ‘corrective’ methodology, inquiring how far they are epistemic and political tools for achieving gender justice that open up spaces for marginalized constituencies, including racial and religious minorities, queers, and women* and how they unwittingly reify the hegemony of an entitled majority by failing to realize the emancipatory possibilities promised by discourses of diversity and intersectionality.
Nikita Dhawan is Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at the University of Gießen, Germany. She has several publications including ”Impossible Speech: On the Politics of Silence and Violence’ (2007) and ‘Decolonizing Enlightenment: Transnational Justice, Human Rights and Democracy in a Postcolonial World’ (ed., 2014). She received the Käthe Leichter Award in 2007 for outstanding achievements in the pursuit of women’s and gender studies and in support of the women’s movement and the achievement of gender equality.
10 NOVEMBER 2020 – 10:00-11:30
Violence and abuse is often considered to be a topic difficult to research with so called ‘hard to reach’ groups. In this lecture, Nicole Westmarland dispels some of the myths and stereotypes related to the problems of being a feminist violence and abuse researcher, while raising some new difficulties that should be considered. Using examples from her own projects, it is argued that how we ’talk’ about violence and abuse has a direct impact on how we approach, hear, and learn about violence and abuse.
Prof. Nicole Westmarland is the Director of the Durham Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse (CRiVA). Her research consists of around thirty research and consultancy projects in the field of male violence against women. She is particularly known for her work on rape, domestic violence and prostitution which has underpinned a number of policy changes and which she has spoken about all over the world.
MASTERCLASSES
9 NOVEMBER 2020 – 13:00-15:00
MASTERCLASS BY NICOLE WESTMARLAND
10 NOVEMBER 2020 – 13:00-15:00
MASTERCLASS BY NIKITA DHAWAN
10 NOVEMBER 2020 – 16:00-18:00