Current events and seminars

CGF Higher Seminar| Centre for Gender Studies, KAU

May 22, 2019; 15:15 – 16:45

Room: 4A301A

Ruth Jones and Kate Tackeray, University of Wocester, UK

Tackling Transgender and Transphobia in Higher Education: The University of Worcester’s Transgender Education and Support Programme (UK)

In contemporary society, there is a growing awareness about transgender and an increasing number of people, particularly young people openly identifying as transgender. Inevitably, transgender people are becoming more visible in higher education (HE) settings. UK Research shows homophobic hate crimes are most commonly experienced by those aged between18-24 (Stonewall, 2013), the age range of the majority of students in HE. A more recent study by Bachmann and Gooch (2018) support this, finding that 41% of transgender respondents had experienced a hate crime in the twelve months preceding their study, 53% of these were aged 18-24 years. Research also shows that 1 in 3 transgender students in UK universities have experienced at least one form of bullying or harassment on campus and that 51% of transgender students have considered leaving university (NUS, 2014).

Prejudice, discrimination, harassment and abuse towards transgender staff and students is an issue that the HE sector needs to recognise and respond to. In 2017, staff at the University of Worcester (UW) were funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), to create the ‘Transgender Education and Support Programme’, an education programme that aims to help staff and students better understand the concepts of gender and transgender, challenge prejudicial attitudes and behaviours, and better support transgender students.

Ruth Jones OBE is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Worcester and founder of the National Centre for the Study and Prevention of Violence and Abuse (NCSPVA) (which was later renamed the Centre for Violence Prevention). She specialises in gender, gender equality and gender-based violence.

Kate Tackeray, PhD student at the University of Worcester and Senior Lecturer with a background in Health and Social care, Community Studies as well as Women’s and Gender Studies.

CGF Higher Seminar| Centre for Gender Studies, KAU

May 29th, 2019

Time: 15.15 – 16.45

Room 3A:340

Eric Plemons, University of Arizona, USA

Transgender/Transplant: historical and contemporary entanglements in medicine

This talk examines the role that transplantation medicine has played in the creation of transsexual and transgender bodies. The technical possibility of transforming subjectivities by moving working parts within one body or between many bodies opened boundaries of the self. From the early gonad transplants between humans and animals that formed the basis of modern endocrinology to contemporary efforts to transplant uteruses and penises into the bodies of trans- people who desire them, this talk considers entanglements between these fields of medicine and what expansions of transplant capacity may mean to for trans- futures.

Eric Plemons, PhD, is a medical anthropologist. He is the Director of the Medical Anthropology Concentration and Certificate Programs, and Co-chair of the Transgender Studies Research Cluster at University of Arizona. Moreover, he is faculty affiliate of the Institute for LGBT Studies, the Department of Gender & Women's Studies, and the Graduate Interdisciplinary Degree Program in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory. His most recent book is entitled The Look of a Woman (2017, Duke University Press) where he ethnographically examines facial feminization surgeries for transwomen.

CGF Higher Seminar| Centre for Gender Studies, KAU

Double Seminar – Trans Studies in Ireland and Spain

June 5th, 2019; Time: 15.15 – 16.00 (Chris) and 16.15 – 17.00 (Elena)

Room: 4A301A

Speakers: Chris Chevallier (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland); Elena María Gallardo Nieto (University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain).

Time: 15.15 – 16.00

Chris Chevallier, Postdoctoral researcher, Trinity College Dublin

Understanding and Improving the Lived Experiences of Sexual and Gender Minority Students in Ireland

The crux of the project will be to disseminate a digital survey to transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming third-level students in the Republic of Ireland, via institutional, student union, and NGO listservs (as well as social media). This will be done to understand their lived experiences, supports, obstacles, and areas where institutions can make improvements, as well as give the community the opportunity to share their voices in a systematic way. This work is lacking and sorely needed to help eradicate transphobia from education while finding best practices for inclusion. The quantitative and qualitative data will be analysed in tandem with the Transgender Equality Network Ireland and the National LGBTQ Federation before an open workshop is organised to discuss the major results. After insights are gained from the workshop, both a policy report and research paper will be adapted from the survey. Outside of this, the study is also greatly needed to gauge the demographics of the community in the Republic of Ireland.

Chris Chevallier, PhD, is an American geographer based at Trinity College Dublin, currently acting as a Project Organiser for an interinstitutional survey on gender and sexual minority students in Ireland. Chris obtained their PhD from Trinity College Dublin, received a MSc in Geography from Stockholm University, and completed their undergraduate career at American University (Washington, DC). Their PhD dissertation involved mapping the medieval Irish landscape with papal records and fieldwork to the UK, France, and Vatican City. Chris’s research interest centre around applying GIS and geographical analysis to historical, social, and security issues.

Part 2 of double seminar - time 16:15 – 17:00

Elena María Gallardo Nieto, PhD student, University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

Rethinking Education Beyond Cisgenderism: The case of Trans Children and Youth in Educational Environments

Last three years of my research dedication has been focussed on studying socio-political control systems against dissident identities and sexualities. Through a cases study research I have collected experiences and life stories of trans* children and adolescents. The analysis navigated emotions, feelings and affects to picture how violence and resistance configure their lives stories. This stage of the research contributed with the performing of qualitative research by a critical positionality, following feminist contributions to scientific knowledge production. Likewise, it was challenged by the complexity in approaching unspeakable matters such as emotionality, suffering, bodily experiences and violence’s materiality.

Through the political analysis of emotions, the findings in my research locate the educational institution in the core of the social problem of transphobia. Emotions such as hate, shame and pain inform how trans* lives face daily cruel forms of invisible and structural violence. The most harming form of violence is the one embodied in the victim's imaginary, socially imposed and intangibly taught through personal, educational and family lessons on cis-normativism and queer-phobia. Simultaneously, I have found forms of resistance and political activism in queering emotions and affects when children and adolescents are found negotiating their dissident identities.

Elena María Gallardo Nieto has a background in Social Work (Granada University/Metropolitan University College of Copenhagen - 2016) as well as an Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies (GEMMA - 2018) from Granada University/Utrecht Universities. Currently, Elena is a Predoctoral Researcher at Rovira I Virgili University, Spain, developing her research and teaching activity at the Department of Pedagogy. Additionally, Elena is a PhD student within the Doctoral Program in Humanistic Studies, Rovira I Virgili University.

International Conference | 4-5 November, 2019, KAU/CGF

The first international Queer Death Studies conference

 "Death matters, queer(ing) mourning - Attuning to transitionings"

The first international Queer Death Studies conference "Death Matters, Queer(ing) Mourning - Attuning to Transitionings" aims to create an arena for critical discussion of death, dying and mourning that goes beyond the dual approach to death – human death in particular – that is common within Western cultural frameworks of Christian tradition or secular biomedical perspectives. As such, the conference invites scholars who work with death, dying, mourning  and afterlife in relation to: diverse cultural, socio-political, historical, and economic conditions; entangled relations between human and the environment in the context of the Anthropocene; differential experiences of marginalised communities and individuals excluded from the hegemonic discourses on death, loss, grief and mourning, associated for example with the heteronormative model of family bonds; and, contemporary forms of necropolitics: mechanisms of power that force certain bodies into liminal spaces between life and death (for instance, refugees whose lives in detention camps turn into the state of “social death” (Mirzoeff 2019)). Interventions that focus on practices that resist hegemonic norms, as well as queer and decolonialise mourning and remembering are also welcome.

In order to search for broad inspirations for alternative articulations and stories which queer, that is, unpack and question the normativities (Chen 2012; Sandilands & Erickson 2012) that often frame contemporary discourses on death, dying, mourning and afterlife, the conference is based on a transdisciplinary engagement involving not only academics, but also activists, artists and other practitioners. In the context of the conference, to queer issues of death, dying, mourning and afterlife means to unhinge certainties, “undo normative entanglements and fashion alternative imaginaries” beyond the exclusive concern with gender and sexuality, often associated with the term “queer” (Giffney & Hird 2008, 6). In particular, the conference will call for papers within the following three overall themes: (1) death matters and materialities, (2) queering mourning, and (3) attuning to transitionings run through both days and all the keynote lectures (to be announced soon). For details please check the website of The Centre for Gender Studies.