Consortium Speaker Series

The Consortium's Speaker Series brings an international roster of frontline practitioners, reflective activists and engaged scholars to University of Massachusetts Boston's campus. Their talks address the complex realities of women’s and men’s lives and livelihoods in conflict-affected areas, the challenges of trying to bring feminist commitments into security policy and humanitarian practice, and the ways in which gender analysis can and must transform resolutely “gender-blind” paradigms of conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Information about Upcoming Speaker Events, Events Earlier This Year, and Past Speaker Events is available here. You can find videos or transcripts of these events, when available, under Consortium Lectures.

Upcoming Speaker Events

Earlier This Year

POSTPONED: Confronting the Climate Crisis: Feminist Pathways to Just and Sustainable Futures

Please join us for a day-long symposium!

March 24, 2020

Symposium agenda with panel lineup and teasers available here.

Our reason for holding this symposium is to call attention not only to the climate crisis, but also to what is at stake in the kinds of solutions that are proposed for it. Many of the proposed “fixes” are rooted in the same political economic paradigms and worldviews that created the current climate and ecological crises in the first place; they often not only pose great environmental risks themselves, but also threaten to gravely deepen existing gender, racial and global inequalities. However, there are also encouraging signs that many activists and researchers are approaching climate breakdown with a global justice perspective. Our goal is to highlight, among them, the critically important work being done by feminist political economists and feminist political ecologists who outline the sorts of radical solutions that the crisis demands, proposing fundamental shifts in the dominant global economic model.

Thus, our symposium, Confronting the Climate Crisis: Feminist Pathways to Just and Sustainable Futures, will consist of three panels, a networking session and a documentary screening:

9:30-11:15am: Feminist Approaches to the Climate Crisis

12:30-2:30pm: Feminist Perspectives on Mainstream "Solutions"

2:30-3:00pm: Coffee and Networking Break

3:00-4:00pm: Documentary Screening: Hands On: Women, Climate, Change

4:00-6:00pm: Feminist Pathways to Just and Sustainable Futures

Throughout, our focus is on intersectional feminist analysis, with an emphasis on global justice and sustainability.

We have a terrific group of speakers, including:

Anita Nayar (Regions Refocus)
Betsy Hartmann (Hampshire College)
Bridget Burns (WEDO)
Edward Carr (Clark University)
Giovanna Di Chiro (Swarthmore College)
Heidi Gengenbach (University of Massachusetts Boston)
Jennie Stephens (Northeastern University)
Joni Seager (Bentley University)
Julie Nelson (University of Massachusetts Boston)
Lucy McAllister (Babson College)
.O (Climate and Social Justice Activist in Philadelphia)
Shalanda Baker (Northeastern University)
Yifat Susskind (MADRE)

This event is being cosponsored by UMass Boston CLA Dean's Office; Africana Studies Dept; Anthropology Dept; Economics Dept; History Dept; Political Science Dept; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Dept; Human Rights Minor; the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy; the Honors College; the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; the School for the Environment; the Sustainable Solutions Lab; and the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies.

This symposium is part of the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights' Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace project. Support for this project comes from Compton Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Why We Need a Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace and a Sustainable Planet

Carol Cohn

Director, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, University of Massachusetts Boston

November 20, 2019

Western peacebuilding models repeatedly fail to bring sustainable peace. And our dominant economic models, with their overwhelmingly extractive stance toward both people and the planet, have left us careening toward climate catastrophe. Major paradigm shifts are urgently needed; this talk will argue that feminist analysis can and must be a key to making those shifts.

This event is being cosponsored by UMass Boston CLA Dean's Office; Anthropology Dept; Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance Dept; History Dept; Political Science Dept; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Dept; Human Rights Minor; the Honors College; the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; and the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies.

Support for the Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace project comes from the Compton Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Gendered Local Voices in Counterterrorism Policies

Anwar Mhajne

Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, Stonehill College

November 4, 2019

Currently, the discourse and actions around terrorism prevention and response are strongly infused with socially-constructed images of masculinity and femininity. Women are often ignored and instrumentalized in terrorism prevention and response approaches. Such approaches have a real and direct impact on women’s rights, with consequences for the right to participation, and freedom of association, among others. This talk will address the need for context-specific security measures through ongoing engagement with local women’s groups to ensure a more effective response that improves lives and access to rights for all.

This event is being cosponsored by the UMass Boston CLA Dean's Office; Anthropology Dept; Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance Dept; History Dept; Political Science Dept; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Dept; Human Rights Minor; the Honors College; the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences; the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; and the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies.

Women of Color and the Global Security Challenges of the 21st Century

Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins

Founder and Executive Director of Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation (WCAPS); Special Envoy and Coordinator for Threat Reduction Programs in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, 2009-17

October 3, 2019

Challenges today are global in nature and are best addressed through global responses with diverse voices engaged. However, those most vulnerable, people and particularly women of color, are not adequately represented at the policy tables where decisions are being made. This discussion will examine some of those challenges, particularly infectious disease, and the impact of those challenges on the most vulnerable communities.

This event is being cosponsored by the UMass Boston CLA Dean's Office; Africana Studies Dept; Anthropology Dept; Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance Dept; Economics Dept; History Dept; Philosophy Dept; Political Science Dept; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Dept and Human Rights Minor; the Honors College; the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences; the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy; the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; and the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies.

Gender-based Violence in the Middle East: Feminist Dilemmas in Islamophobic Times

Nadje Al-Ali

Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies, Brown University

September 12, 2019

The talk charts Al-Ali's trajectories as a feminist activist/academic seeking to research, write and talk about gender-based violence in relation to the Middle East. More specifically she draws on research and activism in relation to Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon to map the discursive, political and empirical challenges and complexities linked to scholarship and activism that is grounded in both feminist and anti-racist/anti-Islamophobic politics.

How Much Land Does A Woman Need? Women, Land Rights and Rural Development

Esther Kingston-Mann

Professor Emerita of History, University of Massachusetts Boston

April 18, 2019

Credit: Georgina Smith / CIAT

The failure to include gender in the economic history of rural development has severely limited our understanding of the colonial, privatizing and collectivist economic policies that disrupted and transformed the lives of rural women and men in the modern world. This talk will rewrite a piece of that history, exploring rural development in 20th-century Kenya through the lens of women’s labor and land claims. In the course of the 20th-century, Kikuyu women resisted efforts by husbands, fathers, brothers, tribal authorities and the state to control women-cultivated lands. Were these women seeking private land of their own, or were they advancing claims that didn't fit neatly into preconceived capitalist or pre-capitalist categories?

This event is being cosponsored by the UMass Boston CLA Dean's Office; Anthropology Dept; Economics Dept; History Dept; Political Science Dept; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Dept and Human Rights Minor; the Honors College; the Sociology Club; and the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy.

© 2020 CONSORTIUM ON GENDER, SECURITY & HUMAN RIGHTSLEGAL STATEMENT All photographs used on this site, and any materials posted on it, are the property of their respective owners, and are used by permission. Photographs: The images used on the site may not be downloaded, used, or reproduced in any way without the permission of the owner of the image. Materials: Visitors to the site are welcome to peruse the materials posted for their own research or for educational purposes. These materials, whether the property of the Consortium or of another, may only be reproduced with the permission of the owner of the material. This website contains copyrighted materials. The Consortium believes that any use of copyrighted material on this site is both permissive and in accordance with the Fair Use doctrine of 17 U.S.C. § 107. If, however, you believe that your intellectual property rights have been violated, please contact the Consortium at info@genderandsecurity.org.