Social Actions Initiative Awards

Submit applications through the SWS Member Portal.

You do not need to be an SWS member to apply or nominate someone for these awards, but you need to use the portal. 

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Social Actions Initiative Award

Deadlines for Submission:  October 1, 2023 at 11:59 pm ET and April 1, 2024 at 11:59 pm ET.

Email Social Action Committee Chair with any questions: Please put: “Social Actions Initiative Awards” as part of the subject line.

Co-Chairs of the Social Action Committee, Evonnia Woods: evonnia@reproaction.org and Heather Hlavka: Heather.Hlavka@Marquette.edu

Selection Subcommittee: Pedrom Nasiri, J’Mauri Jackson, and Sara Tyberg

History and Overview

In 2016, SWS Council approved the Social Action Committee’s (SAC) proposal to support more direct social action of SWS members.  The Social Actions Initiative Awards is SAC’s efforts to directly support and encourage the social activism of SWS members.  Awards are given out twice per year on a competitive basis until funds are fully dispersed.  The social actions represented by this initiative are central to advancing the mission of SWS.

Nature of the Award

IMPORTANT: Please note that expenses will be reimbursed only when itemized receipts have been submitted to the SWS office. Awards will not be paid in advance. Please contact the Executive Officer, Barret Katuna, at swseo.barretkatuna@outlook.com  if you have any questions about this arrangement.

SWS recognizes that action “for women” does not mean that the work was done “with women” or even “by women.” Substantial need exists for social action working with working with men, boys, LGBTQ communities and other groups where change will benefit women and can be understood as feminist action. Therefore, SWS recognizes work done in this spirit regardless of applicant’s gender identity.

Current SWS members can apply for social action funds in the amount of $500 to $1000 to support efforts to undertake social action broadly defined (e.g., advocacy, public education, organizing, movement-building).  Funds can be used, for instance, to sponsor a teach-in on reproductive justice or to collaborate with community projects (we discourage campus speaker events without a clear community or social action component). Be creative!

SAC’s Social Actions Initiative Awards is given out twice per year on a competitive basis.  Information about the awardee and related actions will appear in Network News and the SWS website.

Eligibility and Criteria for Selection
Applicants must be current members of SWS.

Preference will be given to those actions that involve collaboration with students, directly-affected persons, area advocates and activists and to applications from members who work in environments where funds and other support for such effort are extremely limited or non-existent; where heavy workload limits the time to identify and complete more extensive applications; and spaces/places where feminist social action is particularly needed. Priority will be given to projects that are creative and visionary with anticipated long-term impact.

Proposed actions must advance the mission of SWS and be in compliance with the IRS regulations connected to the 501 (c)(6) non-profit status of SWS. Please click the IRS constraints on activity and spending document to confirm compliance.

Review process

An evaluation committee of SAC members will review applications two times per calendar year.

Submission Procedure

Applicants are required to submit their proposals via the SWS Membership Portal that can be accessed at: sws.memberclicks.net.

The application requests the following information about the proposed social action.

• • Title of Proposed Action

• • Describe Social Action (250-300 words)

• • Describe How Action Corresponds to SWS’s Mission (250-300 words)

• Proposed Budget (up to $1000). Click Here: 2019 Allowable Budget Items for Social Actions Initiative Proposals for a document of allowable and unallowable expenses.

Follow-Up and Documentation

Upon completing the social action, applicants will be required to submit the following information within 30 days of completed action:

• • All expense receipts associated with proposed action to the SWS office.

• • One paragraph summary of the action, including links to any related materials (e.g., photos, media coverage); this summary will be shared publicly on the SWS website or in Network News;

• A 1-2 page report including a brief description of the action or activity, the outcome/result of the action, the lessons learned (“if I had to undertake this action again, here is what I would do differently…” i.e., not schedule my reproductive rights event at my Catholic college on Ash Wednesday), and any other related materials (e.g., photos, media coverage).

 

SWS Social Actions Initiatives Award Reporting Form PDF

SWS Social Actions Initiatives Award Reporting Form Word Doc

Previous Award Winners

SUMMER 2021
The WERKshop: A Collaborative Learning Community
Lauren C. Garcia (she/her) is a doctoral student at the University of Virginia and a Graduate Student Affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) at the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill. She completed her Master’s thesis at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020 on the digital communication strategies of white supremacist groups, and the way platforms and algorithmic bias contribute to the spread of their ideas. In addition to her academic work, she is heavily involved in solidarity and mutual aid efforts in the city of Richmond, Virginia. She has worked alongside other students to create several community-centered projects, including a multi-organization annual winter drive, political education symposia, and the Race, Space, Place Initiative’s annual unConference. Her work has been published in The Chronicle of Higher Education and featured by WordPress Discover. Under the umbrella of the Race Space Place Initiative, Lauren proposed a collaborative learning community, called The WERKshop: A Collaborative Learning Community, by and for first-generation femme graduate students of color where participants can prioritize their research interests around race, queer theory, platforms, and digital communication.

Feed The Block
Jessennya Hernandez (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department and teaches in the Gender and Women Studies Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a working class, first generation college graduate, and first generation born in the U.S. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her dissertation research explores how queer and feminist brown and Latinx artists and creatives in greater Los Angeles (LA) produce transnational counterspaces and alternative forms of knowledge through embodied political practices. Tending to the quotidian and everyday life, she focuses on how these networks of queer brown artists and creatives redefine their and their communities’ lives beyond survival and envision a transnational feminist future. As a scholar-activist, she, along with other brown and Black queer women and femmes, co-founded Feed The Block, a grassroots mutual aid collective based on abolitionist and transformative justice practice. The collective provides monthly food and meal distributions; collects and distributes funds to those in emergencies and facing housing insecurity; and distributes bus passes and gift cards to houseless folks. The Social Actions Initiative award will fund a political education workshop focused on training those in the community who want to work and organize as members in the mutual aid collective. The workshop centers critical texts and practices that inform the mutual aid tradition such as Black Radical Politics and Decolonization. Along with building the collective’s membership, the workshop will be established as a reoccurring series for the general community to engage, learn, and discuss these theories and practices together in a local and non-institutional setting. This financial support will help foster the community engagement and power that is necessary for building alternative, autonomous, and sustainable networks of knowing, acting, and living that counter structures of harm. If you would like to learn more about the grassroots mutual aid collective, Feed the Block, located in southern California, or donate to help support, please follow this link https://linktr.ee/feeddablockIE.

We Need to Talk Association (Konuşmamız Gerek Derneği)
Bahar Aldanmaz (she/her) is a Sociology Ph.D. student at Boston University as a Fulbright scholar. Bahar is interested in gender, sexualities, menstruation, inequalities, immigration, and how these intersect. She holds a B.A. in Sociology and Psychology from Koç University and an M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Bahar is also the co-founder of the We Need to Talk Association (Konuşmamız Gerek Derneği), the first and only organization in Turkey that addresses period poverty and the menstruation stigma, widespread problems in Turkey. Their goal is to “challenge period poverty and period stigma structurally.”  The We Need to Talk Association’s mission is to challenge period poverty and period stigma structurally. They have three target groups: seasonal agricultural workers, refugees, and children going to school in remote rural areas. They organize field projects and provide our target groups sanitary products that would last them for either an academic semester or a harvest season. As proposed by Bahar, the SAIA helped to fund “a virtual event on May 28, 2021 -Menstrual Hygiene Day… [as a] global gathering for stakeholders and beneficiaries. The goal of this event was to officially submit a manifesto/communique to UN Women/UNFPA with inputs from stakeholders working against period poverty and menstrual care beneficiaries. They hope with this event they will be able to increase the available funding opportunities for menstruation researchers, enhance the visibility of period poverty in policymakers’ agenda, and design a holistic action plan for menstrual care for all.

WINTER 2021
Defund, Transform, Abolish?: Reimagining Justice in the Era of Mass Incarceration Workshop Series.
Dr. Brittany P. Battle is a scholar-activist and an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Her research interests include social and family policy, courts, social justice, and carceral logics. She teaches courses on social justice in the social sciences, reimagining the criminal legal system, and courts & criminal procedure. She is currently working on a book manuscript (under contract with NYU Press) titled “They’re Stealing My Opportunity to Be a Father:” The Child Support System and State Intervention in the Family, which examines the experiences of parents involved in the child support system using courtroom observations and interviews. The project illuminates the ways that the child support system functions as a neoliberal construct at the intersection of the welfare and criminal justice systems. Dr. Battle is also the co-founder of Triad Abolition Project, a grassroots organization working to dismantle the carceral state, and the Forsyth County Police Accountability & Reallocation Coalition, a collective of grassroots organizations in her area working to defund law enforcement budgets and refund the community. In the summer, Triad Abolition Project organized a 49-day occupation in downtown Winston Salem to secure changes in the county law enforcement agency in response to the murder of John Neville by sheriff’s deputies in the local detention center. The award will fund the “Defund, Transform, Abolish?: Reimagining Justice in the Era of Mass Incarceration Workshop Series.” This series of workshops will train local community organizers and supporters in the traditions of restorative justice (micro-level), transformative justice (macro-level), and abolition. Approximately 15 participants including university undergraduate and graduate students, K-12 educators, activists, and community members will receive materials to read and engage with during the 10-week series. The workshops will serve as a transformative educational and training experience to provide participants with foundational frameworks for understanding abolition and practicing restorative justice. This education and training will ultimately contribute to the community-building needed to support new methods of accountability that move away from carceral systems of punishment and expand communities of care.

Breaking the Cycle of Violence—Addressing Economic Independence for Survivors of Gender-based Violence in Rural Communities.
Dr. Ziwei Qi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Fort Hays State University, Hays, Kansas. She has a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University of North Dakota and a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice from St. Cloud State University. Dr. Qi has been actively engaged in research involving gender-based violence, rural criminology, restorative justice, and social entrepreneurship in the criminal justice system. She is one of the co-founders of the Center for Empowering Gender-based Violence, a research and service center based in rural Kansas. The award will fund the “ Breaking the Cycle of Violence—Addressing Economic Independence for Survivors of Gender-based Violence in Rural Communities.” Four organizations will lead the one-day teach-in virtual workshop in April 2021. They are Colorado/Kansas-based and survivor-centered social enterprises providing housing, job training, and employment to women survivors. During the workshop, we introduce ways to provide both employment and residential assistance to survivors, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the end, audiences will participate in the discussion and propose ideas to providing sustainable support through job training, employment, and safe housing to help survivors to regain control of their life in Hays, Kansas, and beyond.

First Society of Gender Professionals (SGP) Circles Symposium
Dr. Kelly Grace is an independent researcher, consultant and visiting scholar at Drexel University focusing on gender issues in education in Cambodia.  She holds a PhD in Comparative and International Education from Lehigh University, where her dissertation used structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the impact of early childhood education programs on Cambodian mothers’ justifications of child abuse.  Her primary research interest examines barriers related to gender in early childhood education and primary school programs, with an interest in Chbab Srey, or rules for women, and how this impacts educational experiences.  She also works broadly in the area of gender in education K-12 and university settings. Dr. Grace supports the development of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems for education programs, specializes in project data management and analysis, and develops and implements trainings in both gender and M&E in educational settings.  While her contextual area of expertise is the Cambodian education system, she also works with large international organizations on cross-context projects. The award will fund the first Society of Gender Professionals (SGP) Circles Symposium in March 2021. SGP “Circles,” or chapters of members, work in specific thematic/geographic areas, to network, collaborate and provide professional development for feminist academics/practitioners/activists. Circles conduct applied research, develop South-South collaborations for feminist action, and work together to raise the profile of gender expertise around the world. Circles membership is international, with leadership mostly from the Global South, who work in underserved contexts and with minoritized communities. Together, they bring marginalized voices to international arenas.

SUMMER 2020
Healthy Relationship Series for Indo-Caribbean Women and Gender Non-Conforming Folks in South Queens, New York
Tannuja Rozario is a Ph.D. student in Sociology and earned her Advanced Certificate in Feminist Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Currently, she is working on her dissertation about reproductive health experiences of Indo-Caribbean women. Her project is funded by the National Science Foundation.  Tannuja’s passion for advocacy and research stems from her background as an Indo-Caribbean immigrant.  At a young age, she witnessed gender-based violence and reproductive injustice in Guyana, causing her to realize that gender inequality Indo-Caribbean women experience. As an activist, she became an Executive Board Member of South Queens Women’s March—a gender justice organization in South Queens, New York that fosters empowerment and provides resources for women and gender non-conforming folks. Based on her research with community members, she realized that conversations on maintaining healthy relationships and sexual empowerment are integral to reproductive justice. Tannuja’s project, “Healthy Relationship Series for Indo-Caribbean Women and Gender Non-Conforming Folks in South Queens, New York,” is the first-ever healthy relationship series Indo-Caribbean community in Richmond Hill, NY.  The healthy relationship series will include workshops on healthy relationships, consent, sex positivity, and healing. These workshops will invite community activists, students, professors, healing justice coaches, and healthy relationship coaches to come together to help an under-resourced community that continues to witness the deaths of many community members to gender-based violence.

Pedrom Nasiri is a Joseph-Armand Bombardier doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, at the University of Calgary, under the supervision of Dr. Pallavi Banerjee. Their doctoral research employs critical phenomenology and intersectionality to examine how the increasing prevalence of polyqueer families articulate with ongoing racial, gender, and class formation projects. Pedrom completed their M.A. at the University of Toronto in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, where they explored the experiences of Queer Muslim refugees in the Canadian asylum apparatus. Much of Pedrom’s work is guided by critical social theories that emphasize the need to employ academic theory and inquiry to address everyday social injustices. Pedrom has worked with various governmental and non-governmental agencies across Canada to address long-standing inequities in healthcare and social service systems. Pedrom has been recognized for this work by The Order of St. John, the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, and the Governor-General of Canada. Funds will facilitate focus groups and interviews across the Fall of 2020 with polyamorous women inhabiting a diversity of identities. The data gathered from focus groups and interviews will be used to implement a five-day series of workshops, as well as printed materials, on the subject of violence, financial literacy, and trauma in polyfamilies. The project is in line with SWS’s Mission to engage in social justice projects to advance the well-being of women in society.

FALL 2018
Funds for Artists Designing Graphic Materials for Health and Migration Website
Roberta Villalón, St. John’s University, will organize support for the development of a website offering free bilingual, community-accessible materials on the health effects of migration, particularly within the migrant community and for migrants’ advocates and health providers. Materials for the website are the result of a three-years mixed-methods transnational, interdisciplinary activist (participatory action) study that blends feminist of color scholarship with critical migration theories, critical race theories and southern epistemologies to contribute to the sociological study of migration, health and intersecting inequalities. Materials are being developed with art and design students and artists who are creating accessible audiovisual and graphic bilingual materials. This website will be a living platform for additional resources, including the collection of migration and health histories and best practices in the provision of migration and health services. It will support the open and accessible publication and dissemination of research outcomes that both in content and format provide groundbreaking feminist scholarship.

North Oakland Restorative Justice Council (NORJC): Rapid Response Team.
Ina Kelleher, UC Berkeley. North Oakland is a neighborhood deeply impacted by the bay area housing crisis, which has sent waves of gentrification and displacement through this historically African American working-class neighborhood. Due to the rupture of community networks, it is also an area heavily impacted by gun violence. Law enforcement response to these tragedies is inadequate in that it 1) has no preventive component, 2) does not address the needs of victims and their families, 3) usually results in more trauma and harm in the community, and 4) usually fails to deliver even the normative promise of “justice.” SWS funds will support NORJC to develop a rapid response team of North Oakland residents. The rapid response team will be trained as a community resource that residents could call to de-escalate conflicts before tragedy strikes. In the wake of community violence, responders would reach out to victims and their families to provide resources, organize a community-initiated response (such as peace walks or memorials), and advocate for the victim as they navigate the often re-traumatizing criminal justice system. Rapid responders could also respond and provide care and healing in the wake of other violent events in the community, such as residents losing their homes, or families losing loved ones to incarceration.

Women on the Move to get their Voices HEaRd.
Julia Miller, University of Kentucky, will bring the ‘Women on the Move’ mobile art installation to The Girl Project’s Voices HEaRd festival in Kentucky. The Girl Project is an arts-activism program for high school-age girls focused on empowering them to challenge and reshape gendered representations. Through a six-week intensive program, participating girls work with a guest artist to develop a critical consciousness through community building and feminist performing arts. This culminates in a community festival, Voices HEaRd, where artist-activists of all genders are invited to share performance and visual arts raising awareness of, empowering, and celebrating girls’ and women’s voices across generations and across the nation. A portion of proceeds are donated to a partnering organization, giving Girl Project participants the chance to give back to their community and act upon their burgeoning feminist consciousness. SWS funds will specifically support their efforts by bringing the “Women on the Move” mobile art installation to the festival to raise awareness of sexual assault through public art and interactive art-making projects.

SPRING 2018
UCSC’s Activist in Residence Program (2019)
Sylvanna Falcón, Faculty, UC Santa Cruz. This project will contribute to supporting a local activist in residence at the Research Center for the Americas (RCA, formerly the Chicano Latino Research Center) at UC Santa Cruz. The objective of this residency is to give the selected applicant an opportunity to access university research resource and have the time and space to engage with UCSC students and faculty on their ongoing or future social justice-oriented work. It is hoped that this residency will gives a non-UCSC community member an opportunity to be in dialogue with prospective collaborators at the university. The selected activist will be someone who is highly self-motivated and who is seeking to expand perspectives and networks to impact progressive social change. The selected activist will have a demonstrated record in responding to the needs of marginal communities (such as low-income, immigrant, women, and communities of color).The goal is to bridge the university and local community divide to think about what kinds of social action research and projects can emerge. But part of the expectations of this residency include the following: visiting appropriate classes during the residency, organizing workshop or seminars based on their local advocacy issue, and supporting their next activist project.

Maine NEW Leadership’s State Capitol Day
Amy Blackstone, Faculty, University of Maine. This project supports a 6-day residential nonpartisan institute hosted on the University of Maine campus for undergraduate women from across Maine who are interested in political and/or civic leadership. The institute provides experiential training in many aspects of leadership, politics, and policy making, including public speaking, coalition building, networking, advocacy, and running for office. SWS funds will specifically provide transportation support for 28 students to travel to the state capital in Augusta to meet with legislators, tour the State House, and attend panels put on by women legislators and activists on topics including “The Challenges of Policy Making” and “Making a Difference in Your Community.”

Creating a Class of “Fierce Advocates for Gender Justice”
Crystal Jackson, Faculty, John Jay College of Criminal Justice – CUNY. This project supports the development of feminist praxis action/intervention opportunities for JJC students engaged in social justice work in their own communities. SWS funds will be used to purchase 21 copies of Hey Shorty!A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets, along with other miscellaneous supplies for students living in severe poverty. JJC’s motto is that we are creating “fierce advocates for justice.” The phrase is painted on walls, along with a list of types of justice, including racial justice, criminal justice, poetic justice, and gender justice. This motto serves as a jumping off point in class, to guide students on a path toward becoming fierce advocates for gender justice. The assignment will help them embody the identity of “activist.”

FALL 2017

Maternal and Infant Mortality Screening Event

Evonnia Woods, Graduate Student, University of Missouri. This project will support Reproaction to organize a series of events across Missouri to raise awareness about maternal and infant mortality. Eight events will be organized for public screenings of the documentary ‘The Naked Truth: Death by Delivery’ followed by panel discussions with healthcare experts. The experts include doctors, nurses, direct-entry midwives, a professor, doulas, a policy director, and activists/organizers who will speak about infant and maternal mortality form their perspectives. Scheduled events include two at universities or with a focus on student recruitment, and the rest in or adjacent to predominantly Black communities. The purpose of the events is to raise awareness on racial disparities between white women and women of color in general, but Black women specifically. Maternal mortality rates in Missouri are on par with the national average which places Black women as 3-4 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related issues, regardless of wealth and education. Attendees will be called to action; which has been to sign petitions to the governor and/or to participate in a subsequent direct-action protest.

Ella Baker Day 2018

Beth Williford, Faculty, Manhattanville College. This project supports the Sociology and Anthropology department at Manhattanville College to organize a public event in 2018 celebrating the life and work of Ella Baker. The event is comprised of two portions: the day will feature students presenting research and policy posters to the campus community, and the evening will culminate in a keynote speaker or panel discussion of faculty and community experts engaged in social justice and action to counter oppressive discourse. The theme for Ella Baker Day 2018 will be “Arts and Activism,” and will focus upon the important ways that art can communicate the pain of oppression as well as resistance and collective action.

Greene School Library Project

Susan Lee, Faculty, Boston University. This project will support the Greene Elementary School library in Fall River, Massachusetts, in resuming library services for its students by supporting Greene Street staff in purchasing books that show gender and racial balance and incorporate some of the foreign languages spoken in community members, especially Spanish and Portuguese. Green Street Elementary is located in a low-income neighborhood notable for its high proportion of female-headed households and households that pay more than 30 percent of their income in housing costs. The Greene School library has been out of operation for several years due to budget cutbacks that eliminated the position of librarian. This project builds on the work of community volunteers from St. Luke’s Church and the local Niagara Neighborhood Association who have been working to organize a check-out system, and staff the library several days a week to allow the library to open.

Association of Gender Professionals Collaborative Platform Development

Karine Lepillez, independent SWS member, is working with other SWS members to found an organization for promoting the development of intersectional gender expertise for professional practice. Key to the group’s ability to increase collaboration between practitioners, academics, and activists dedicated to feminist action, they develop a user-friendly online platform that is disability accessible, easy to use in developing countries, and culturally respectful. This project will support the initial development of the platform by engaging a web designer to ensure the platform is structured from the start to be inclusive and accessible.

SPRING 2017

Dubuque LGBTQ Task Force Development

Clare Forstie, Graduate Student, University of Wisconsin-Platteville & Northwestern University in collaboration with community member and activist Indigo Channing, and a group of LGBTQ community members working with local nonprofits to assess and respond to LGBTQ community needs. This project will support the development of an intersectional LGBTQ task force in organizing a half-day strategic planning retreat with training support from nonprofit management experts. The aim with this initiative is to develop the foundation for a well-structured, flexible, sustainable LGBTQ task force that assesses and responds to community needs in an ongoing way.

Cooperative Learning Workshop to Learn, Deeply Reflect, and Advocate for Graduate Student Mothers

A.S. CohenMiller, Faculty, Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan in collaboration with Kelly Ward and graduate students at the Indiana University at Bloomington. This project will provide a forum for graduate student mothers to come together with international specialists studying and working with mothers in academia. The goal is to provide support to graduate student mothers in developing support as they move through the academic pipeline.

Website for the Women’s Living Islam and Hinduism Project (WLIHP)

Anjana Narayan, Faculty, California State Polytechnic University Pomona in collaboration with WLIHP, a network of sociologists, philosophers, psychologists and scholars of comparative literature and women’s studies working in India, Pakistan and the United States. This project will support the development of a website for outreach and dissemination of resources generated by the network such as video archives of talks, working papers, call for participation in conferences, links to social media, and elaboration of network research and educational resources.

Women of Color in STEM Forum

Nancy Campos, Graduate Student, University of Buffalo in collaboration with graduate students at SUNY New Paltz. This collaboration will support a first forum that addresses some of the issues women of color in STEM fields face at predominantly White institutions and in the workplace. The aim is to promote the development of a community of support for women of color in STEM fields for students that will carry on later.

Campus and Community Screening of “Beauty Bites Beast” and Self-Defense Course

Margaret McGladrey, Graduate Student, University of Kentucky in collaboration with the SWS of the Bluegrass chapter; the Kentucky University of Kentucky Police Department; University of Kentucky Violence Intervention Program; the Center for Research on Violence Against Women, a community-based Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center; Greenhouse17 (an innovative local domestic violence shelter) programs; and The Girl Project, a grassroots arts-activism initiative for gender equity that serves high-school aged girls. This project will help support the development of promotional materials a film screening of “Beauty Bites Beast,” and the facilitation of a self-defense course for university and high school students directly affected by intimate partner and sexual violence in Central Kentucky.

Fall 2016

Campus Teach-In about Women Refugees

Yasemin Besen-Cassino, Associate Professor of Sociology, Montclair State University. This project aims to bring together both activist scholars and local activists working on and with refuge women for a campus teach-in. The purpose of this event is to educate the campus and local community and discuss appropriate ways in which to effectively engage this issue.

Chinese Women’s Rights Movements

Wenjie Liao, Assistant Professor of Sociology & Anthropology, North Carolina State University.  Renowned Chinese feminist scholar-activist Lu Pin will be invited to NCSU to discuss the state of the Chinese women’s rights movements to the campus community.  The purpose of this project is for a US audience to learn about the political situation in China, showcase Lu’s photo collection of Chinese feminist movements, and engage in dialogue with a prominent activist about a non-US based social movement.

Intersectional Feminism & UMass Boston’s 2017 Social Theory Forum

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston.  The purpose of this project is to host a prominent feminist scholar-activist at the 2017 Social Theory Forum conference at UMass-Boston. This speaker will have an opportunity to meet with undergraduate students and discuss intersectionality-based activism and social actions.

Healing our Communities From the Inside-Out: Restorative Justice Behind Bars

Heather Mooney, Graduate Student of Sociology, Wayne State University in collaboration with John R. Espie – Prisoner 278182 – Michigan Department of Corrections.  The project supports a presentation of a Restorative Justice (RJ) Summit to be held in a Michigan prison in cooperation with the Michigan Theory Group (which includes incarcerated men, professors, and graduate students across Michigan state), the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and select allies within the state government.

SPRING 2016

All-Gender Restrooms in Humboldt County, California

Meredith Williams, Assistant Professor of Sociology, in collaboration with HSU students May Fournier, Lupe Madrid, Corina Martinez, Liza Olmedo and Tiffany Proa – Humboldt State University

This project aims to create awareness about, and accessibility for, transgender and gender non-conforming folks for using the restroom in an isolated, rural community.

Sociologists for Immigrants’ Justice 

Anna Smedley-López – Assistant Professor in Residence of Sociology – UNLV. In collaboration with UNLV’s Service Learning Initiative for Community Engagement in Sociology (SLICES), UNLV Social Sciences Libraries, and Immigrants’ Justice Initiative (community partner), this social action involves a teach-in about the politics of U.S. asylum and a workshop for asylum seekers.

UASK Florida State University

Kelly Grove – Sociology PhD student and Sexual Health Counselor for the Center for Health Advocacy and Wellness – Florida State University. UASK (University. Assault. Services. Knowledge.) Florida State University will be a website and downloadable app for iPhone and Android smartphones that provides users with community-specific sexual assault, domestic violence, and intimate partner violence resources in one place.