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Conference Highlights

Plenary Lecture

 

Thursday 11 June 1800-1900, Aula Magna
Joni Lovenduski

Feminism and Political Science

Outline to be confirmed.

 

 

 

Joni Lovenduski is Anniversary Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences. She is Chair of the Editorial Board of Political Quarterly and a member of the editorial boards of British Politics, The British Journal of Political Science, The European Political Science Review and French Politics. She was Professor of Politics and Head of Department at Southampton University from 1995 to 2000. She was Vice-Chair of the European Consortium for Political Research from 2000-2003 and a member of the Research Council of the European University Institute from 2003-2008. She has acted as consultant on Gender and Politics for UNECE, the European Commission and the Council of Europe. She directed the European Commission funded investigation of the state of the art of research on Gender and Politics in Europe in 1996 and 1997. She is European convener of the European Science Foundation funded Research Network on Gender and the State. In 2009 she won the Gender and Politics Award by the ECPR Standing Group on Gender and Politics.

She has two main strands of current research interests. The first is political representation, in particular how institutions are shaped by and shape gender relations and how this in turn affects political representation and the quality of democracy. The second strand is the development and implementation of equality policy in the UK and the European Union. She has also researched on and maintains an interest in gender and political representation; political recruitment and candidate selection, combining equality policies in the UK and Europe; sex equality policy; equality machinery; gendering public policy: gendered ceremony and ritual in parliament. Her current research is on gender and the state, including political representation, European equality agencies and public policy debates.

Her published work on gender and politics includes Feminizing Politics (2005), State Feminism and Political Representation (2005), The Hansard Report on Women at the Top (2005), (with Sarah Childs and Rosie Campbell), Gender and Political Participation (2004) (with Pippa Norris and Rosie Campbell); Women and European Politics (1986) Contemporary Feminist Politics (1993) (with Vicky Randall), Political Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament (1995) (with Pippa Norris), and High Tide or High Time for Labour Women (1998) (with Maria Eagle MP). She was co-editor of The Politics of the Second Electorate (1981), The New Politics of Abortion (1986), Gender and Party Politics (1993) and editor of Feminism and Politics (2000) as well as many articles and essays in edited collections on issues of Gender and Politics.

 

Roundtable

Europe is Burning - And we are Talking about Intersectionality!

Saturday 13 June 1415-1545, Room IX

Sponsored by the Routledge Series, Gender and Comparative Politics, editors: Karen Celis and Isabelle Engeli

This plenary roundtable discusses the major political and societal transformations that are taking place in Europe today. The themes of the roundtable range from the Ukrainian crisis to the economic, financial and political crises in the EU and its member states, and to the political responses to these crises in the form of the rise of the populist right parties and the rise of conservatism across Europe as well as counter reactions to them. We ask the provocative question about intersectionality to explore whether feminism as a form of activism and feminist scholarship are detached from what is going on in the real world or strongly engaged with it and providing answers and solutions to the crisis. The plenary roundtable will also address questions about the oppositional forces that there are to feminist engagements.

Chairs
Karen Celis and Johanna Kantola

Speakers

  • Annica Kronsell
  • Diana Mulinari
  • Soraya Post
  • Ekaterina Rashkova
  • Mieke Verloo
  • Sylvia Walby

 

Gender and Politics Prizes

Gender and Politics Award

 

We are delighted to confirm the Gender and Politics Award has been given to Professor Mieke Verloo.

Mieke Verloo, is Professor of Comparative Politics and Inequality Issues at Radboud University, Nijmegen. She worked for IVA, the Institute for Social Science Research at Tilburg University, for the SCP (as free-lance researcher), for several departments at the University of Nijmegen, and at the University of Utrecht. She worked as staff member for two committees to stimulate women's studies at the national level (VBEO 1980-1982 and STEO 1988-1989). She was Visiting lecturer or Fellow at the University of Hamburg-Harburg and at the IWM, Institute for Human Sciences, in Vienna. At the IWM she also was Research Director for MAGEEQ (MAinstreaming GEnder EQuality) a 5th Framework project (2003-2005), see www.mageeq.net.

Mieke is a path-breaking thinker in gender and politics. In whatever area of the discipline she has oriented her thinking and activities, she has opened new paths in the way of approaching the issue, challenging and creatively bringing forward theory, methodologies, and empirical analyses. Gender mainstreaming, intersectionality, and Critical Frame Analysis methodologies are good examples of this. Mieke’s works on gender mainstreaming have been pioneering in reflecting on one of the most important policy strategies (‘another velvet revolution?’), and pointing at the mainstreaming potential for ‘displacement and empowerment’, and oppositions to gender equality (one of her current research lines). Her reflections on intersectionality have challenged the EU institutional way of addressing inequalities as a ‘one size fits all approach’ and keep inspiring scholars and activists all over the world (see her 2013 article in Signs on intersectionality). This includes her keynote she was invited to give for the 2011 ECPG in Budapest, which was titled ‘Gender Equality Policies as Interventions in a Changing World’, and the Joint Sessions workshop at the University of Antwerp on ‘Thinking Big about Gender Equality Policies’, that she coordinated with Amy Mazur. Mieke Verloo’s development of Critical Frame Analysis has tremendously contributed to the advancement of discursive methodologies for the study of gender and politics, mobilising hundreds of researchers to employ CFA for making the meanings and norms of gender policies visible (see the books Multiple Meanings of Gender Equality Policies and The Discursive Politics of Gender Equality).

Mieke is a consultant to many organizations that play a key role in promoting gender equality, and as a trainer of some truly important people in politics whose influence is crucial to promoting gender equality in different places in Europe. Her work as a consultant and as a trainer especially in the Council of Europe but also in the EU has been crucial to what we all think today about gender mainstreaming and her ten years after evaluation (Social Politics) reflects that there is still a lot she has to say about mainstreaming. Her work as a trainer of gender mainstreaming in countries sometimes far remote from her own has also shown her commitment to the cause of promoting gender equality not just in terms of understanding gender and politics better in theoretical terms, but also in terms of channelling what we know from theory back to practice. Moreover, Mieke’s empowering personality defined her way of consulting politics, training bureaucrats (across Europe) so that politics and gender have a better relationship. Her recent consultancy work includes work for the Luxembourg government (2008-9), the European Parliament (2006, with Sylvia Walby), and for the Luxembourg Presidency (on the Beijing +10 report, with Sylvia Walby). In 2003 she organised two seminars for DG Justice and Home Affairs (European Commission) on gender mainstreaming and gender impact assessment in co-operation with Suzanne Baer, professor of Gender and Public Law Humboldt University zu Berlin. In 2002-2003 she was coach and trainer for the Observatoria project, an EU funded initiative on gender mainstreaming and NGO’s concerning equal pay. Countries involved were Austria, Italy, Spain and France.

Mieke has opened many opportunities for young researchers in gender and politics, as Scientific Officer of two comparative European Union funded projects (FP5 and FP6) on gender equality policies: MAGEEQ (Mainstreaming Gender Equality Policies in Europe www.mageeq.net 36 months) and especially QUING (Quality in Gender Equality Policies www.quing.eu 54 months, 4 million EUR). The outcome of these projects have been hundreds of comparative and single-study analyses of gender equality policies in Europe produced by researchers in the EU-27, Turkey, and Croatia. Her qualities for leading research teams, with enthusiasm, wisdom, and capacity to keep together ‘nice and smart’ researchers (as key criteria for being in the team, she would say), are admirable. Research on gender and politics has moved –and is moving- forward thanks to Mieke. Mieke is also a genuinely empowering personality. She has practiced empowerment in her work as a government and IO consultant and trainer, but most importantly from the point of view of this award she has been a truly empowering research director with influence on many younger researchers. The environment for researching gender and politics that Mieke has created in both MAGEEQ and QUING has served as a school where younger researchers could learn about gender and politics, but has also served as a place where young researchers could find research topics and were encouraged and supported to take on ambitious and innovative projects in which besides gaining important research topics and reaching important results they could increase their self-esteem and confidence to become known researchers in the field. Mieke’s leadership and indeed authorship in creating such an environment proved beneficial East and West, North and South of Europe.

 

Gender and Politics PhD Prize

We are delighted to confirm the prize has been awarded to Dr. Ana Miškovska Kajevska, for her dissertation, “Taking a stand in times of violent societal changes: Belgrade and Zagreb feminists’ positionings on the (post-)Yugoslav wars and each other (1991–2000)”. The prize will be formally awarded on Thursday 11 June during the opening session at the 2015 ECPG Conference.

My dissertation explores the positionings (discourses and activities) of the Belgrade and Zagreb feminists vis-à-vis the (post-)Yugoslav wars and one another between 1991 and 2000. Primarily applying a Bourdieuian framework and based on a comprehensive literature review, extensive semi-structured qualitative interviews, and a thorough examination of organisational documents and printed media articles, this socio-historical analysis attends to a number of biases, lacunae and incorrect or insufficiently precise (recurring) information in the scholarship. Thereby, this thesis enriches the existing knowledge on the war-related feminist activism in Belgrade and Zagreb in the 1990s, and raises pressing epistemological questions about this knowledge.

In short, I challenge the common suggestion that the outbreak of the war violence in 1991 led to the same reorganisation of the Belgrade and Zagreb feminist fields: The activists in each city, who had up until then worked together without tensions, divided into antinationalists and nationalists and began clashing with each other because of the different war-related positionings. I show that there were significant differences between Belgrade and Zagreb in the contents of those positionings and in the intra-feminist dynamics, due to which these two cities should not be considered interchangeable locations. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the designations ‘antinationalist’ and ‘nationalist’ were not completely value-free, objective descriptions. They were instead an essential part of the local and international efforts to stop the (sexual) war violence, and of the struggle for legitimacy among the feminists in each city – endeavours in which many Western (feminist) academics, activists, and funders were involved, too.

 

 

Ana Miškovska Kajevska is a freelance researcher, translator and activist. She holds a PhD degree in Social Sciences and a MSc degree (cum laude) in Sociology and Gender Studies from the University of Amsterdam. She has also finished the programmes in Women’s Studies and Peace Studies at the Zagreb-based Centre for Women’s Studies and Centre for Peace Studies, respectively, and has an extensive activist experience in inter alia human rights and environmental protection. In addition to her interest in the (post-)Yugoslav wars and sustainable postwar recovery and reconciliation, she is committed to the critical examination of the established (scholarly) classifications and ideas, especially those regarding gender and sexuality.

 

 

Young Scholars Programme

The ECPG features two career building activities geared at graduate students and post-docs.

Activity 1 Thursday 11 June 0900-1230

Career Development Masterclasses (for pre-registered participants only) University Main building, Room VIII

  • 0900-0930: Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) sponsored breakfast - University Main building, Hall, 1st floor
  • 0930-0940: Welcome and introduction of ECPG Young Scholars Programme by ECPG co-convenor Liza Mügge
  • 0940-0945: Introduction to the APSA Women and Politics Research Section by its Treasurer Jennifer Piscopo
  • 0945-1045: Masterclass: “Getting Published” facilitated by Politics & Gender editors Jill Irvine and Celeste Montaya
  • 1045-1100: Break
  • 1100-1145: Masterclass: “Do’s and Don'ts of Writing Grant Applications” facilitated by European Commission laureates Mieke Verloo (FP5 and FP6) and Georgina Waylen (ERC)
  • 1145-1200: Presentation: “The Marie Curie Experience” by Marie Curie laureates Rosalind Cavaghan and Sara de Jong
  • 1200-1230: Discussion
     

Activity 2 Saturday 13 June 1300-1400

Speed mentoring (lunch included), Gamla torget, Room Svedelius

Young scholars reflect on specific aspects of their career with accomplished and experienced scholars in three 7-minute speed mentoring sessions. The speed mentors participating in this session are:

  • Gabrielle Abels, University of Tuebingen
  • Sarah Childs, University of Bristol
  • Susan Franceschet,University of Calgary
  • Jill Irvine, University of Oklahoma
  • Fiona Mackay, Edinburgh University
  • Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Amy Mazur, Washington State University
  • Petra Meier, University of Antwerp
  • Birgit Sauer, University of Vienna
  • Marian Sawer, Australian National University

 

 

Conference dinner

 

For those who have registered and paid, a conference dinner is being held at Norrlands Nation, Västra Ågatan 14, Uppsala, at 19.30 on Friday 12 June 2015. The dinner includes a three-course meal, non-alcoholic drinks and coffee/tea. Wine tickets will be available for advance purchase in the bar at 75 Kronor/ glass.

Conference dinner speaker

Soraya Post, Swedish Member of the European Parliament for the Feminist Party, will deliver the after dinner speech. Soraya is a highly experienced human rights activist, focusing especially on Roma rights and is the first MEP to be elected on a feminist ticket. Further information about Soraya Post can be found using the following links: