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The Association’s former Chairs include:

1990 :
Vice Chair: Sue Lees
Chair: Professor Silvia Walby (s.walby@lancaster.ac.uk)

1992 :
Co-chair: Mary Kennedy
Co-chair: Professor Maggie Humm(M.Humm@uel.ac.uk)

1993 :
Co-chair: Professor Chris Corrin (c.corrin@tfts.arts.gla.ac.uk)
Co-chair: Professor Eileen Green (e.e.green@tees.ac.uk)

1994:
Co-Chair: Professor Chris Corrin
Co-chair: Mary Kennedy

December 1994:
Co-Chair: Christine Zmroczek
Co-Chair: Professor Chris Corrin

1995:
Chair: Christine Zmroczek

1996:
Co-Chair: Professor Diana Leonard (d.leonard@ioe.ac.uk)
Co-Chair: Professor Miriam David (m.david@ioe.ac.uk)

1997:
Co-Chair: Pofessor Diana Leonard
Co-Chair Professor Miriam David

1998:
Co-Chair: Dr Jennifer Marchbank (jmarchba@sfu.ca)
Co-Chair: professor Miriam David

1999:
Co-Chair: Dr Carol Truman (c.truman@lancaster.ac.uk)
Co-Chair: Dr Margrit Shildrick (M.Shildrick@qub.ac.uk)

November 1999:
Co-Chair: Dr Carol Truman
Co-Chair: Professor Alison Assiter (Alison.Assiter@uwe.ac.uk)

2000:
Co-Chair: Dr Carol Truman
Co-Chair: Professor Alison Assiter

2001:
Co-Chair: Professor Alison Assiter
Co-Chair: Dr Susan Jackson (s.jackson@bbk.ac.uk)

2002:
Co-Chair: Dr Margrit Shildrick
Co-Chair: Dr Susan Jackson

2003:
Co-Chair: Dr Margrit Shildrick
Co-Chair: Dr Clare Hemmings

2004:
Co-Chair: Dr Stacy Gillis (stacy.gillis@ncl.ac.uk)
Co-Chair: Dr Clare Hemmings (c.hemmings@lse.ac.uk)

2006- 2009:
Dr Stacy Gillis

2009-:
Dr Alison Phipps (a.e.phipps@sussex.ac.uk)

The FWSA supports the campaign to ‘save The Women’s Library‘.  Please follow the link and sign the petition.

Mary Kennedy, Executive Committee member of Friends of the Women’s Library has written the following letter to the FWSA.

“On Wednesday 14 March, London Metropolitan University’s Board of Governors announced that they will be seeking a new home, custodian or sponsor of The Women’s Library’s collections. 

If a new home is not found by the end of December 2012, the Library will move to opening hours of one day per week for a period of three years, with a further review at the end of that period. We will keep you informed of further developments, and we are in the process of contacting key stakeholders.If you have any suggestions of potential custodians, or any queries, please email moreinfo@thewomenslibrary.ac.uk

This decision is, we understand, related to the difficult financial position of the University. The view of the Board of Governors is that the University is better able to ensure the long term future of the Library by seeking a new home, custodian or sponsor. The Deputy Chief Executive of the University, Paul Bowler contacted Anne Summers-the Chairwoman of the Friends of the Women’s Library before Christmas to let us know that the University was establishing a small working group of Governors and Senior University Governors to review the arrangements for the housing and management of the Women’s Library and the separate special Trade Union Collection. The outcome of their deliberations was that they can no longer continue to maintain either of the collections in the way in which they have. Paul Bowler has now established a small group to work on identifying potential custodians for the Women’s Library and Amy Gibson, the Women’s Library’s Development Manager has been transferred into the University’s Marketing, Communications and Alumni Department to work on this project. Anne Summers was invited to the initial meeting of that group and will be the key point of communication for the Friends on developments. Paul Bowler has also agreed to come the AGM of the Friends of the Women’s Library on the 28th June 2011 to bring us up to date with developments.

Following the announcement of the decision there have been a number of immediate responses including:

• The establishment of a “Rudi’s Save Our Libraries Campaign” started off by a member of library staff at the University, which includes a petition on the care2 petition which has attracted over 8,388 signatures to date

• The establishment of a Save the Women’s Library blog by the London Metropolitan University branch of Unison includes some good information about the library and makes a powerful case for trying to save all the elements that constitute the library i.e. the collections, the building, the events and activities programmes, and the expert staff that look after and develop the collections.

As Friends of the Women’s Library we are an independent and separate charity from London Metropolitan University, who support the continuation & independence of the Library as the outstanding museum & archive of Women’s History. The position of the Library is very serious indeed and any help and/or support… is important.People can support the Women’s Library by joining the Friends (only £15 p.a.& a Membership Form can be downloaded from the Library website), identifying possible future custodian/s of the Library, alerting colleagues and students to the situation”.

For further details on the campaign, please contact the Friends of the Library:
Dr Anne Summers: Chairwoman: anne.summers@bbk.ac.uk
Maureen E Castens Secretary: mcastens8@gmail.com
Diana Dollery Treasurer: dianamdollery@aol.com

Letters can also be sent to the Friends c/o The Women’s Library, 25 Old Castle Street, Aldgate, London, E1 7NT.

For more on the Women’s Library, please read Beatrix Campbell’s article ‘A room of one’s own: why the Women’s Library should not be made history‘.

Areas for possible contributions include but are not restricted to: gender studies, masculinity studies, queer studies, discourse studies, performativity theory, feminisms, media studies, sociolinguistics, education studies, LGBTQIA themes, sexuality studies and childhood studies. We would also like to invite theoreticians of gender and sexualities, as well as activists who deal with gender and LGBTQIA-related issues in Anglophone and Celtic contexts. The language of the conference is English. We plan to publish a monograph, which will include selected papers from the symposium.

Our goals are to:

– offer a forum for faculty and PhD students to present papers and work-in-progress in a comfortable and friendly atmosphere

-
allow participants to present different methods and styles of gender research and hence explore the creative, interdisciplinary potential of language and gender studies

- work up an interdisciplinary research agenda – a line of gender inquiry which will further the fight against gender-related discrimination and stigmatization

- offer a platform for BA and MA students interested in the topic to share their academic interests in Young Scholars’ Workshop

Keynote speakers:
prof. Judith Jack Halberstam (University of Southern California)
dr Bethan Benwell (University of Stirling)

The deadline for abstracts (approximately 250-300 words): May 15th, 2012
Please submit your paper proposal online: http://www.ges-symposium.pl/
Conference fee: 500 PLN/€120 (PhD students: 350 PLN/€85)
E-mail: info@ges-symposium.pl

Friday 22 June 2012 9.30am-4.30pm

A feminist narrative research symposium event is being held at the University of Huddersfield, organised by a group of postgraduate researchers. This event will bring together feminist narrative academics, students and practitioners to explore the opportunities and challenges that feminist narrative research can offer. This will include lectures and workshops on feminist narrative research theory, methodology and methods. The event will conclude with a roundtable discussion, providing a forum for critical thinking to inform the development of feminist narrative research.

This event is free, but spaces are limited. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

For further details and a booking form please email: feministnarrative@hud.ac.uk

This year’s winning essay is:

Nancy Martin (Linacre College, University of Oxford)- ‘The Rose of No Man’s Land[?]’: Femininity, Female Identity, and Women on the Western Front

The shortlisted essays which together with the winning essay will be published in the Journal of International Women’s Studies are:

Finally, we would like to thank our judges- Dr Ruth Lewis, Dr Nazneen Ahmed, and our internal judge, Dr Maud Perrier who contributed to making this round such a success!

Library editors: Claire Nally and Angela Smith

The library is located within the visual culture list at I.B. Tauris, but has a number of clear links with other series and areas of study: film, television, art, cultural studies, history and politics, and thus would engage closely with other I.B.Tauris titles, whilst nonetheless differentiating itself in a number of ways (a number of our monographs represent the first theoretical analysis of their subject).

Whilst gender is a heavily theorised subject, our library focuses on the work of innovative scholarly practice so that in many ways the monographs we would hope to commission are the first of their kind. We anticipate monographs which would be of relevance to a wide variety of disciplines related by the common theme of gender.

The titles in the library are the work of both established and emerging academics in a variety of disciplines who are analysing gender in relatively unexplored areas. These innovative and avant-garde titles would enhance the existing catalogue of I.B. Tauris. Each monograph would be 70,000 words in length, and include a general introduction by the series editors to ensure that the links between the titles remain explicit.

Whilst being emphatically interdisciplinary, the ‘visual culture’ list allows for critical texts focusing on gender that would prove interesting to a wider range of readers in academia and beyond, and catering to an international audience. Recently accepted titles include studies of homosexuality and the pornography industry; masculinity and postfeminism; steampunk and gender; and the single
mother in popular cinema.

In the first instance, we invite proposals (to include a summary of the book’s aims and subject matter, chapter headings and an indication of readership) of about 500 words to be sent to both co-editors (claire.nally@northumbria.ac.uk and angela.smith@sunderland.ac.uk) by 1st July 2012.

For the first time the Warwick Sociology Department is able to offer a generous Commonwealth Scholarship to one student taking the Gender and International Development MA in 2012-13. Candidates must be nationals of a “developing Commonwealth country” not presently studying in a developed country, and who have not done so before for more than a short time. There are several other qualifiers you can follow on the link below.

The University of Nottingham

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Mary Eagleton (formerly Leeds Metropolitan University)
Professor Mary Evans (Gender Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science)

Please note that the call for papers has been extended until Friday 11th May, 2012.

The current age of austerity is posing significant challenges to feminist scholarship within academia. Recent government funding cuts to higher education are jeopardising the future of research in the arts and humanities more broadly, but the decline of centres, institutes and courses devoted to gender and women’s studies has the potential to threaten the future of feminism in the academy. Retirements and redundancies are possibly signalling the end of feminist teaching and research in certain higher education institutions. The dearth of employment opportunities for postgraduates and early career researchers has the potential to elide the next generation of feminist scholars. The increasingly competitive environment of employment in higher education is generating divisions and inequalities which put pressure upon the networks of support, co-operation and community which have been integral to feminist research, teaching and practice.

This collaborative event between the FWSA and CWWA aims to provide a multi-disciplinary forum to address such issues. In what ways are these changes affecting our work and lives? What potential is there to resist these narratives of decline? How might feminist teaching, research, theory and activism engage with and combat such challenges? Featuring a selection of keynote speakers, round table discussions and early career workshops, ‘Feminism in Academia: An Age of Austerity’ invites papers which examine ‘austerity’ in the broadest sense of the term. Topics for papers might include, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• The impact of the age of austerity upon women’s and feminist writing, art, performance and scholarship.
• Theoretical perspectives and discourses on austerity in feminism, past and present.
• Teaching/researching feminism and women’s writing in the age of austerity.
• Resistance to narratives of decline in the age of austerity.
• The challenges posed to ‘sisterhood’ in the current academic environment, from postgraduate, early career research and established scholarly perspectives.
• Bridging the gap between postgraduate/early career feminist researchers and established scholars.
• Postcolonial, queer, and/or differently abled responses to the age of austerity in feminist research.
• Historical, political and sociological responses to the age of austerity in feminist research.
• Exploring alternative futures for feminism in the academy.
• Strategies of resistance to the marginalisation of feminist research.
• Feminist activism, education and the age of austerity.
• Encouraging the next generation of feminist scholars; challenges and prospects for postgraduate research.

Please send 300 word abstracts for twenty-minute papers to the event organisers Claire O’Callaghan and Helen Davies at feminismandausterityconference@gmail.com by 11th May 2012. Further information on this event can be found at: http://feminismandausterity.wordpress.com.