Programming | Name | Bios |
Plenary – Challenging Feminist sociologies in the Era of Global Pandemics
(Chair: Andrea Boyles) |
Bandana Purkayastha | Bandana Purkayastha is a Professor of Sociology and Asian & Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. Her research on human rights, intersectionality, transnationalism, migrants, violence and peace appears in over 75 books, articles, and chapters in many countries, including in translation. She has won several awards for research and teaching excellence and for service and leadership, including two career awards: the Contribution to the field award by the Asia and Asian American research section of American Sociological Association (ASA), and. ASA’s Jessie Bernard award, which “which recognizes significant contributions to improving the lives of women” as well as SWS’s mentoring award. She was President of Sociologists for Women in Society in 2013. She currently serves on the elected 16 member executive committee of International Sociological Association, an organization with memberships from over 120 countries |
Melanie Heath | Melanie Heath is Associate Professor of Sociology at McMaster University. She studies the politics of family, sexuality, and gender. She is author of One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America (2012, New York University Press) and The How to of Qualitative Research (with Janice Aurini and Stephanie Howells, second edition, 2022, SAGE). She is currently working on a book manuscript, titled Forbidden Intimacies: Transnational Regulation of Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance, under contract with Stanford University Press. Her work appears in sociology and interdisciplinary journals, including Gender & Society, Signs, Socio- logical Perspectives, The Sociological Quarterly, Contexts, Qualitative Sociology, and PLOS ONE. She is the president of RC32: Women, Gender, and Society (2018–2022) of the International Sociological Association. | |
Cecilia Menjivar | Professor Cecilia Menjívar holds the Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Chair and is Professor of Sociology at UCLA. She specializes in immigration, gender and family dynamics, and broad conceptualizations of violence, including gender-based violence. Her research explores the impact of immigration laws and enforcement on immigrants and the effects of multisided violence on individuals, especially Central American immigrants. She also focuses on the state and judicial failures that sustain gender-based violence in Central America. Some of the books she has authored or edited include, “Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America,” “Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala,” “Immigrant Families,” “Constructing Immigrant ‘Illegality’: Critiques, Experiences, and Responses,” and “The Oxford Handbook of Immigration Crises.” Professor Menjívar has worked extensively on behalf of the communities she studies by writing briefs for class action lawsuits to end the harms of immigration detention and by writing pro bono declarations to support asylum cases of women escaping gender-based violence. She is both a John S Guggenheim Fellow and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. She has served as Vice-President of the American Sociological Association and is currently President (2021-2022). | |
Ghassan Moussawi | Ghassan Moussawi is Assistant Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His work lies in the areas of transnational gender and sexuality studies, queer of color critique, and postcolonial feminisms, focusing on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, empire, and nation. His book Disruptive Situations: Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut, (Temple University Press, 2020) winner of the 2021 National Women’s Studies Association’s Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize and the Sociology of Sexualities 2021 Distinguished Book Award, investigates everyday life disruptions and violence, and queer formations in post-war Beirut. | |
Boaventura de Sousa Santos | Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra (Portugal), and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned an LL.M and J.S.D. from Yale University and holds the Degree of Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, by McGill University. He is Director Emeritus of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, social movements and the World Social Forum, in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, French, German, Chinese, Danish, Romanian and Polish. His most recent project ALICE: Leading Europe to a New Way of Sharing the World Experiences was funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council, one of the most prestigious and highly competitive international financial institutes for scientific excellence in Europe. His most recent books in English are: Decolonising the University: The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2021); Toward a New Legal Common Sense. Law, Globalization, and Emancipation (third edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2020); Demodiversity: Toward Post-Abyssal Democracies (Ed. with José Manuel Mendes) New York: Routledge (2020); Knowledges Born in the Struggle. Constructing the Epistemologies of the Global South (Ed. with Maria Paula Meneses). New York: Routledge (2019); The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham and London: Duke University Press (2018); If God Were a Human Rights Activist. Stanford University Press (2015); Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers (2014). | |
Chaniqua Simpson | I am a Black queer feminist organizer, facilitator/educator, sociologist, artist, and caregiver. I love Black people and have committed my work to be in the service of Black liberation. I currently use my skills and expertise to support Black movements in resource building, strategizing, and problem-solving. As a trained sociologist and as an organizer, I have spent time in a variety of roles. I have worked as a researcher, studying how people experience and also resist race, class, and gender inequality and food insecurity. I have also taught courses on racial inequality in the United States and public health courses on food inequality. More recently, I have spent time creating programs and events that facilitate conversations around critical race theory, gender and sexuality, intersectionality, race, and racism. I have a master’s in sociology with a focus on food and environmental inequality as well as race, class, and gender inequality. I am currently pursuing my PhD in sociology where I am studying the Movement for Black Lives and the Black Radical Tradition. I am a member of BYP100-Durham where I help resource the movement through grassroots fundraising. I have spent most of my time working in diversity, inclusion, and justice work. My work has been recognized by local and national organizations, including Black Voices for Black Justice Fund (BVBJ), Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS), Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project (M4BL – EJP), the American Sociological Association (ASA), and NC State University. | |
Plenary – Feminist Mobilizing for Better Futures: A Transnational Persepctive
(Chair: Esther Hernández-Medina) |
Hülya Gülbahar | As a feminist activist in the women’s movement in Turkey, Hülya Gülbahar co-founded many women’s organizations such as Equality Watch Women’s Group (EŞİTİZ), Women’s Media Watch Group (MEDİZ), and the Women’s Platform for Equality (EŞİK). Since the 1990s, she has worked as a volunteer lawyer for the Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation. She also serves on the Board of Directors of The Women’s Library and Information Center Foundation in Istanbul.
Gülbahar is a founding member and spokesperson for the Violence Against Women Law Platform, Civil Law Platform, Turkish Penal Code Platform, Women’s Constitution Platform, and Istanbul Convention Monitoring Platform. Between 2007 and 2010, she was the chairperson of the Association to Support Women Candidates (KA.DER) and continues to serve on its Advisory Board.
Among the recognitions and awards Gülbahar received are the Human Rights Honor Award from the Faculty of Law of Istanbul University, and the Science Award from the Turkish Association of University Women. She provides training on violence against women and women’s rights in various institutions and organizations, participates in conferences, radio and TV programs. She works as a freelance lawyer in Istanbul. |
Barbara Sutton | Barbara Sutton is a Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany (SUNY). She is also affiliated with the departments of Sociology and of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies. Prof. Sutton is originally from Argentina, where she earned a law degree, and was trained in the United States as a sociologist. She is the author of Bodies in Crisis: Culture, Violence, and Women’s Resistance in Neoliberal Argentina (2010), winner of the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize by the National Women’s Studies Association. Her book, Surviving State Terror: Women’s Testimonies of Repression and Resistance in Argentina (2018) received Honorable Mentions by the American Sociological Association Sex and Gender Section and the New England Council of Latin American Studies. She co-edited (with Nayla Luz Vacarezza) the recently published book, Abortion and Democracy: Contentious Body Politics in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (2021). | |
Lizeth Sinisterra | Licenciada en Historia de la Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia); magíster en Estudios Sociales y Políticos de la Universidad Icesi (Cali, Colombia). Actualmente es Gerente de Pacífico Task Force, investigadora del Centro de Estudios Afrodiaspóricos – CEAF de la Universidad Icesi, y profesora del Departamento de Estudios Sociales de la Universidad Icesi. | |
Manisha Desai | Manisha Desai is the Head of Sociology and Professor of Sociology and Asian and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. Her areas of research and teaching include gender and globalization, transnational feminisms, and social movements in India. Her most recent book is Subaltern Movements in India: The Gendered Geography of Struggles Against Neoliberal Development (Routledge 2016). In addition, she has 4 other books and numerous articles and book chapters. Currently she’s working on several projects related to decolonizing transnational feminism and social theory as well as contemporary feminist campaigns in Mumbai, India.In recognition of her contribution to feminist scholarship she was awarded the Sociologist for Women in Society’s 2015 Distinguished Feminist Award. She is also the recipient of the 2016 Faculty Mentor Award from the Compact for Faculty Diversity in the United States. She has served in many leadership capacities including as President of Sociologist for Women in Society and as part of the Expert Committee of Every Woman Everywhere’s Global Treaty to End Violence Against Women. | |
SM Rodriguez | Dr. S.M. Rodriguez is Assistant Professor of Gender, Rights and Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science. A scholar-activist who has been engaged with antiviolence community organizing for the last decade, they primarily research anticarceral and decriminalization mobilizations, queer and racialized identity formation for groups and movements, and transnational solidarities in the 21st century. They are the author of the book, The Economies of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing for LGBTI Rights in Uganda (2019), in which Rodriguez provides a nuanced analysis of the implications of transnational organizing and international funding for local activism. Their publications include “Carceral Protectionism and the Perpetually (In)Vulnerable”; “Queers Against Corrective Development: LGBTSTGNC Anti-Violence Organizing in Gentrifying Times”; and “Not Behind Bars: The Rippling Effect of Carceral Habitus and Corrective Violence on the Family and Community Life of Prison Guards”. SM is currently writing Abolition in the Academy: Scholar-Activism and the International Movement for Penal Abolition. Their work has been supported by various grants, awards, and fellowships, including the AAUW Postdoctoral Fellowship (2020-21) for Abolition in the Academy. They were the SWS designee for the American Sociological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program’s forty-first cohort. | |
Katherina Tatiana Cabrera Cordero | Katherina Cabrera es una joven campesinas, negras, feminista, actualmente es encargada de juventud de la Confederación Nacional de mujeres del campo CONAMUCA , coordina el espacio de la coalición por los derechos y salud de las mujeres, es encargada de juventud de la Articulación nacional campesina. Le apasiona el trabajo social. Su lucha a sido siempre para que los derechos de las mujeres sean visibilizando y garantizado. Ser campesina es sinónimo de lucha y resistencia. Hoy más que nunca es necesaria la articulación y la unidad de todos los movimientos, grupos sociales, dónde las mujeres hacemos vida para que podamos asumir las lucha por los derechos de las mujeres, derechos que históricamente hagan Sido negado y que de una forma u otra tiene un impacto diferenciado en las mujeres . | |
Plenary – Decolonizing Sociology: Liberatory Feminist Praxes
(Chair: Chriss Sneed) |
Raewyn Connell | Raewyn Connell is Professor Emerita, University of Sydney, and Life Member of the National Tertiary Education Union. She has taught in several countries and is a widely-cited sociological researcher. Her books include Ruling Class Ruling Culture, Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division, Gender & Power, Masculinities, and Southern Theory. Her most recent books are The Good University and the co-authored Knowledge & Global Power. Her work has been translated into twenty-four languages. Raewyn has been active in the labour movement, and in work for gender equality and for peace. Details at www.raewynconnell.net and Twitter @raewynconnell. |
Ochy Curiel | Ochy Curiel Pichardo. Afrocaribeña decolonial. Nació en República Dominicana y actualmente vive en Colombia.Doctora y magíster en Antropología Social de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Especialista en Educación Superior y trabajadora social. Es docente-investigadora de la Universidad Nacional y de la Universidad Javeriana en Bogotá, Colombia. Es co-fundadora del Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudios, Formación y Acción Feminista (GLEFAS) Es también cantautora. Activista del movimiento lésbico-feminista, antirracista, del feminismo autónomo y del feminismo decolonial. Tiene varias publicaciones en las que se destacan su libro: La nación heterosexual, Análisis del discurso jurídico y el régimen heterosexual desde la antropología de la dominación (2013), Feminismos decoloniales y transformación social (2020); Un golpe de Estado: la Sentencia168-13. Continuidades y discontinuidades del racismo en República Dominicana (2021). Ha sido co-editora de varios libros y ha escrito y varios artículos en los que articula desde una perspectiva decolonial los análisis del racismo el (hetero) sexismo, el clasismo y todos los sistemas de dominación, temas prioritarios en sus investigaciones. | |
Tanya Saunders | Dr. Tanya L. Saunders is a sociologist interested in the ways in which the African Diaspora throughout the Americas uses the arts as a tool for social change. As a 2011-2012 Fulbright scholar to Brazil, Dr. Saunders began work on their current project about Black Queer Artivism in Brazil. Dr. Saunders holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Master of International Development Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Dr. Saunders’ 2015 book entitled Cuban Underground Hip Hop: Black Thoughts, Black Revolution, was published by the University of Texas Press. The Portuguese version of the book was released a few weeks ago. In Spring 2022 they will join the 9th Fellowship cohort at the Hutchins Center for African American and African Research, as a Mark Claster Mamolen Fellow. | |
Vrushali Patil | Vrushali Patil is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. She writes and teaches at the intersection of gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial/decolonial studies, and historical sociology. She has published in Ethnic and Racial Studies; Sociological Theory; Signs; Theory and Society; Gender & Society; Journal of Historical Sociology; Annals of Tourism Research; Tourism Geographies, Comparative Studies in Society and History; and Sex Roles, among other journals. Her forthcoming book is titled Webbed Connectivities: The Imperial Sociology of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality (2022, University of Minnesota Press). | |
S. Crawley | S. Crawley is an associate professor of sociology and affiliated faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Florida, broadly interested in identity work and embodiment across gender, race, and sexuality, pragmatism and ethnomethodology, feminist and queer interventions to traditional theories and methods, and comparative epistemological approaches within social science. Crawley has published in such journals as Gender & Society, Sexualities, Journal of Lesbian Studies, The American Sociologist, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, The Sociological Quarterly, Feminism and Psychology, and Hypatia, and coauthored the book, Gendering Bodies (2008, with L. Foley and C. Shehan). Following a recent project with post-Soviet scholars, some of Crawley’s work has been translated into Russian and Ukrainian. | |
Aurora Vergara | Doctora en Sociología de la Universidad de Massachussetts- Amherst. 2021-2022, W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellow, Harvard University. Ganadora del premio Martin Diskin de LASA ( Latin American Studies Association) a la mejor disertación de doctorado que integra activismo y producción rigurosa de conocimiento en la convocatoria de 2014. Nominada como una de los 20 mejores líderes de Colombia por la Fundación Liderazgo y Democracia en 2016. Directora del Centro de Estudios Afrodiaspóricos (CEAF) y profesora del Programa de Sociología en la Universidad Icesi. Es antologista, compiladora y autora de libros tales como Demando mi libertad. Mujeres Negras y sus estrategias de resistencia en Nueva Granada, Venezuela y Cuba, 1700-1800 (2018, Editorial Universidad Icesi); Afrodescendant Resistance to Deracination in Colombia. Massacre at Bellavista-Bojayá-Chocó (2017, Palgrave Macmillan), Descolonizando mundos: Aportes de intelectuales negras y negros al pensamiento social colombiano (2017, CLACSO). | |
Celebrating Interdisciplinary Perspectives as Integral to Feminisms
(Chair: Nancy López) |
Blu Buchanan | Blu Buchanan is a qualitative and historical scholar, employing methods ranging from archival analysis to oral history and interviews. Their research focuses broadly on the role of violence in everyday life, which informs their twin research trajectories: 1) studying whiteness and masculinity as projects shaping intracommunal violence in the LGBT community and 2) the practices and habits Black trans folks develop to resist and decenter violence in their everyday lives. |
Ginetta Candelario | In addition to being a professor of sociology, Ginetta Candelario is a faculty affiliate of the Latin American and Latina/o Studies Program (LALS), the Study of Women and Gender Program (SWG), the Community Engagement and Social Change Concentration (CESC), and she also served on the advisory group for the Gloria Steinem & Wilma Mankiller School for Organizers at Smith College. She has also been the editor of Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism since July 2017. She has directed the LALS Program several times, most recently from 2011 to 2014, and is the founding vice president of the National Latin@ Studies Association (LSA). She is a founding executive committee member of the New England Consortium for Latina/o Studies (NECLS), she was appointed by the American Sociological Association to its Committee on Professional Ethics for 2017–20 and to the Finance Committee for 2021-2024. In addition, she has served as the Gender Section co-chair, the Latina/o Studies Program track chair, the Latino Studies Section co-chair and most recently on the Executive Council for the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). Candelario’s research interests include Dominican history and society, with a focus on national identity formation and women’s history; Blackness in the Americas; Latin American, Caribbean and Latina feminisms; Latina/o communities (particularly Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican); U.S. beauty culture; and museum studies. She has been a Fulbright Scholar in the Dominican Republic twice, in 2003 and 2016. | |
Julie Shayne | Dr. Julie Shayne earned her BA & MA in Women’s Studies from San Francisco State University and her PhD in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara. Her first job out of graduate school was a joint appointment in Sociology and Women’s Studies at Emory University but her heart stayed on the west coast, so she eventually resigned, left the tenure track, and relocated, sin plan, to the Seattle area. Fortunately, she had good timing. She is now a Teaching Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell where she co-founded and presently coordinates their GWSS program. She is author/editor of four books. Her first three are about revolution, feminism, and social movement in Latin America and her most recent is an interdisciplinary, online, open access edited collection called Persistence is Resistance: Celebrating 50 Years of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies.
|
|
Jane Conway | Janet M. Conway, PhD Political Science, is Professor of Sociology at Brock University, former Canada Research Chair in Social Justice and Nancy Rowell Jackman Chair in Women’s Studies. Her research centres on transnational social justice movements under conditions of globalization, notably transnational feminist, peasant and Indigenous peoples’ organizing, and their significance for social innovation, political thought, and democratic life in the face of contemporary crises. She is author of more than fifty published works, including: Edges of Global Justice: the World Social Forum and its Others (Routledge 2013) and Cross-border Solidarities: Feminist Perspectives and Activist Practices (Rowman & Littlefield 2021) with Dominique Masson and Pascale Dufour. Her work has been published in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian and is transdisciplinary, addressing the social sciences and humanities. | |
Nathalie Lebon | Nathalie Lebon: Ph.D in Anthropology, Associate Professor and Chair of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Gettysburg College. Co-editor (with Janet M. Conway) of Popular Feminism(s): Pasts, Presents, and Futures (2021) published in Latin American Perspectives. Also co-editor (with Elizabeth Maier) of Women’s activism in Latin America and the Caribbean: Engendering social justice, democratizing citizenship (2010) and De lo privado a lo público: 30 años de lucha ciudadana de las mujeres en América Latina(2006).
|
|
Sylvanna Falcon | Sylvanna M. Falcón is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies, Director of the Research Center for the Americas, and founder/director of the Human Rights Investigations Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activists inside the United Nations [University of Washington Press, 2016; winner of the National Women’s Studies Association’s Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Award], and the co-editor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship [Rutgers University Press, 2021] and New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights [Routledge, 2011]. She is a former United Nations consultant to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. | |
Francisco Galarte | Francisco J. Galarte is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of New Mexico where he teaches courses in Chicanx, Latinx and transgender studies. He is also the Director of the Feminist Research Institute at the University of New Mexico. He was born and raised in Brawley, California located in the Imperial Valley along the US/Mexico Border and identifies strongly as a transfronterizo, meaning that the borderlands inform his creative and scholarly projects. His most recent articles have appeared in publications including Aztlan: Journal of Chicano Studies, Chicana/Latina Studies Journal and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. He has been involved with TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly since the journal’s inception in 2011 and served as the Fashion Editor from 2012-2018 and since 2018 has served as co-general editor of the journal. His first book, Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies (University of Texas Press, 2021), explores how transgender analytics intervene or fail to intervene in the current reading practices that exist in Chicana/o Studies for making sense of processes of racialization, gendered violence, queer sexualities, masculinities and femininities. | |
PJ DiPietro |
|
|
Jennifer McWeeny | Jennifer McWeeny is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of philosophy of mind, feminist theory, decolonial studies, philosophy of gender and race, and phenomenology. McWeeny has published two books on cross-cultural philosophy: Speaking Face to Face: The Visionary Philosophy of María Lugones (2019), co-edited with Pedro DiPietro and Shireen Roshanravan, and Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions (2014), co-edited with Ashby Butnor. She is a recipient of the Fulbright National Research Scholar Award and the Editor in Chief of the award-winning, multidisciplinary journal Simone de Beauvoir Studies (www.brill.com/sdbs). | |
Collective Solidarities and Community Organizing in New Mexico
(Chair: Kris DeWelde) |
Corrine Sanchez | Corrine Oqua Pi Povi Sanchez, PhD, of San Ildefonso Pueblo is Executive Director of Tewa Women United. She received her BA in Environment, Technology and Society from Clark University. A MA in American Studies with a Health Education minor from the University of New Mexico and completed her doctorate at Arizona State University in Justice Studies. She is part of the co-creation process of building Indigenous Knowledge through Tewa Women United’s work over the past 30-years. Corrine is trained in forensic interviewing, sexual assault intervention and prevention. Corrine was one of sixteen visionary leaders across the country selected for the first cohort of the Move to End Violence. In 2016, she was a Stepping Into Power Fellow of Forward Together, a national movement building fellowship for Reproductive Justice. Ms. Sanchez currently serves on the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s Advisory Council, the Community Advisory Board for Masters in Public Policy at UNM, and is a Board member for Attach Your Heart Foundation. Most recently, Ms. Sanchez was selected to serve on the Governor of New Mexico’s Advisory Council on Racial Justice. Corrine is dedicated to family and community healing, youth development, and ending violence against Native women, girls and our Earth Mother. |
Lorena Blanco-Silva | ||
Bianca Encinias | ||
Ruth Hernández-Ríos | Ruth Marleen Hernández-Ríos is a sociologist committed to enacting social change through scholarship and teaching. Her research and teaching interests lie in the intersection of gender, international migration, and Latinx communities. Her current research project examines how Mexican migrant families create and maintain transnational ties via social justice theater and other cultural performances. Additionally, she is working on a project that explores how women use digital activism to spread awareness about PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder). Professor Hernández’s family history of migration – she was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and migrated to Los Angeles, California at the age of one – as well as her intersecting identities as a first-generation college graduate from a working-class background, has impacted how she mentor’s students, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds. | |
Pre-Conference: Transnational Feminist Praxis in the Era of Global Pandemics
(Chair: Erika Márquez-Montaño) |
Beatriz Padilla | Beatriz Padilla holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; a Master’s in Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Licenciatura (BA) in Political Sciences and Public Administration from the National University of Cuyo, in Mendoza, Argentina. Dr. Padilla is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of South Florida. Before joining USF in 2018, she was Associate Professor at the University of Minho and Associate Research Professor at Instituto Universitario de Lisboa. She remains affiliated to CIES-Iscte. Dr. Padilla has been engaged in many international initiatives: “the Venezuelan Humanitarian Crisis: Migration, Trauma and Resilience”; “Trajectories of Refuge: Gender, Intersectionality and Public Policies in Portugal”; “Apart Together” to study the impact of COVID-19 on migrants and refugees around the world, including the United States; “Multilevel governance of cultural diversity in a comparative perspective: EU-Latin America”; Health and Citizenship: Gaps and needs in intercultural health care to immigrant mothers; and Conviviality and Super-diversity in Lisbon and Granada. Since the pandemic, through volunteering, her research has focused on assisting Latinas who are facing housing insecurity. She has conducted fieldwork in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile and Portugal, and also in the US, with Latino populations in the Midwest and Florida and with Brazilians in Portugal and California. She is very active in the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) where she represents the sections before the Executive Committee, has been the co-chair of the International Migration and the Gender and Feminist Studies Sections. She is one of the founders of Alianza Latina Faculty and Staff Association and a member of the USF Presidential Task Force Advancing Latino Access and Success (ALAS). |
Minwoo Jung | Minwoo Jung is a sociologist who studies gender and sexual politics, globalization, and social movements. His research and teaching interests include global and transnational sociology, political sociology, economic sociology, social movements, human rights, gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity, and qualitative methods. He is particularly interested in the multi-scalar impacts of global and regional politics on political, economic, and social life of marginalized groups. Drawing on two years of comparative ethnographic research in Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea, including 230 in-depth interviews with LGBT activists and community organizers, his book project examines the global circulation and transformation of human rights discourse. He has won fellowships, awards and/or grants from the American Sociological Association, International Sociological Association, Association for Asian Studies, American Council of Learned Societies, and Social Science Research Council, among others. His award-winning work has been published in positions: asia critique, Social Movement Studies, and British Journal of Sociology. | |
Assata Zerai | Dr. Assata Zerai serves as the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI) and Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico (UNM). At the helm of the Division for Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Zerai’s dynamic experiences and strong record of leading, planning for, resourcing, and documenting the impact of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, have expanded UNM’s diversity programming and strategy. As PI on the Racial and Intersection Microaggressions Survey (RIMA), Zerai posted over a dozen reports, and is leading workshops to guide UNM and partners in the practice of interrupting RIMAs. Zerai’s research examines achieving inclusion in complex organizations, just access to information and communications technologies, novel contributions of BIPOC women’s scholarship, and structural impediments to maternal and child health. The latest of her five books spanning these topics, is African Women, ICT and Neoliberal Politics: The Challenge of Gendered Digital Divides to People-Centered Governance (Routledge 2019). Previously, Dr. Zerai served as full professor of sociology, in addition to many administrative roles at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2002-2019); and currently Professor Emerita. Zerai’s work as Associate Chancellor, Associate Provost, and Associate Dean included multiple initiatives to diversify and enhance inclusivity of faculty, students, and staff from underrepresented groups there. For example, Zerai was co-PI on a $1M award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to increase proportions of graduate students of color underrepresented in STEM. Zerai received the Zenobia Lawrence Hikes Women of Color in the Academy, National Award for Outstanding Administrative/Professional Faculty (March 2018). | |
Roberta Villalón | Originally from Mar del Plata, Roberta Villalón was born during the last military regime in Argentina. With a genuine interest in the politics of social inequalities, Roberta has been committed to actively work for justice within and across geographical and social borders. Her background in political science and international relations, together with her expertise in Latin America and Latin American immigrants, has shaped her transnational sociological perspective distinctively.Her first authored book, Violence Against Latina Immigrants: Citizenship, Inequality and Community (2010, NYU Press), and the three-part special issue on The Resurgence of Collective Memory, Truth and Justice Mobilizations in Latin American Perspectives, with its related book, Memory, Truth and Justice in Contemporary Latin America (2017, Rowman & Littlefield), illustrate her global feminist politics.A Fulbright Scholar, and Professor of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at St. John’s University, New York City, Roberta is also affiliated with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), the Women’s, Gender and Sexualities, and the Global Development and Social Justice Programs at the university. Over the years, she has been an active member and has served in various capacities in the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the International Sociological Association (ISA); and Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). Roberta has recently been elected President of SWS, and her tenure began in February 2021. Currently, Roberta is finalizing a transnational, interdisciplinary, and applied research project on Health Inequalities and Migration focusing on the Ecuadorean case.
|
|
Pallavi Banerjee | Pallavi Banerjee is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary since 2015. Her research interests are situated at the intersections of sociology of immigration, refugee studies, gender, unpaid and paid labour, intersectionality, transnationalism, minority families and the Global South. Her book entitled, The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families and the Failures of Dependent-Visa Policy forthcoming, NYU Press, explores how the immigration and visa regimes of United States affect men tech-worker and women nurses’ families of Indian immigrant professional workers in the U.S. Her other award-winning research has been published in many peer-reviewed journals including the American Behavioral Scientist, Contexts, Sociological Forum, Women, Gender and Families of Color among other journals. She has also written opinion-pieces in venues such as The Globe and Mail, The Conversations and Ms Magazine and her research has been cited widely in the media in the U.S., Canada and India. Dr. Banerjee is currently working on a new book manuscript and several research papers from her new Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded project on refugee resettlement of Yazidis, Rohingyas and Syrians in the U.S. and Canada.
|