News #6 - APRIL 2010
EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR GENDER RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND DOCUMENTATION
In this newsletter: •
Message from the presidents
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Report of conference
Message from the presidents
the
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Ratified minutes of the GA
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Names to faces (introducing Vera and Genevieve)
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Other announcements:
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Photos and videos of the Brussels conference
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NOISE summerschool
Dear members and prospective members of ATGENDER,
In this sixth newsletter we will address several issues: first, we will revisit the first ATGENDER conference ‘BEYOND EUROPEAN GENDER STUDIES – TRANSVERSAL CONNECTIONS’, which was held in Brussels on February 18-19 of this year. Secondly, we will publish the ratified minutes of our first General Assembly, which was held on the second day of our conference. Thirdly, we have included a section ‘names to faces’, which gives you short bios of the women behind info@atgender.eu: Vera Fonseca, our office manager, and Genevieve Gauthier, our intern. Finally, we have attached several announcements related to the topic of our network for you convenience.
Before we go into addressing these points, we would like to thank a few people for making the ATGENDER conference possible, and a great success: -Inge van Stighelen from Amazone, with her intern Sara Surinx; and -Lisa Wouters from Sophia. Inge, Sara and Lisa, you have done a great job making the conference participants feel at home in Brussels. ATGENDER is enormously grateful for your kind offer to host our first conference, and for organizing it so efficiently! In addition, we would like to thank ATGENDER’s very first intern, Charliene van der Werf, for arranging everything on the side of ATGENDER. You have done a great job, and now that your internship has officially ended, we can only say that you have been very important for starting up ATGENDER, and we look forward to following your career in European gender studies.
After the ATGENDER conference and GA, the Board has embarked on several projects, in order to strengthen our network. We are furthering our contacts with the editorial boards and publishers of several European gender studies journals in order to get discounts for our members; we are working on the 8th European Feminist Research Conference which will be held in Budapest in 2012; we are trying to ameliorate the amount of institutional members of ATGENDER. On that last front, we can now proudly say that we have 55 members.
ATGENDER Central Coordination
We now invite you to read our newsletter, and please do not hesitate to contact us in case of questions.
P.O. box 164 3500 AD Utrecht The Netherlands The Netherlands tel: +31-30-253 6013/6322 fax: +31-30-253 6695 E-mail info@atgender.eu
On behalf of the ATGENDER Board, Harriet Silius and Iris van der Tuin
Report of the conference
Visit our website! www.atgender.org ATGENDER’s first conference BEYOND EUROPEAN GENDER STUDIES – TRANSVERSAL CONNECTIONS took place in Brussels on February 18 and 19, 2010, at Amazone. The conference was a great success with 107 participants from over 20 countries. The conference was opened by presidents Harriet Silius and Iris van der Tuin. In the first plenary results from some of the ATHENA3 working groups, AOIFE sponsored projects and WISE activities were disseminated. The preparations for ATHENA4 were presented and the architecture of the new application launched. At the same time as ATGENDER was discussing both previous results and new activities the Tuning Validation Conference set up by ATHENA3 held its evaluation session. In the afternoon the Tuning delegation reported back to the conference on their preliminary, very positive, findings. The final report will appear later. For many members of ATGENDER the Tuning exercise is not that familiar. Therefore, we give you a short summary of the main points. The Gender Studies Tuning Brochure is the result of over a decade of intensive cooperation and exchange in Gender Studies in Europe through the ATHENA network. By choosing the Tuning format ATHENA scholars participated in a European project that invites professionals in education throughout Europe to formulate their learning goals in a way that will allow potential students and employers to understand what is being offered in Gender Studies training. In addition to texts produced within the ATHENA network, two questionnaires were offered to a variety of stakeholders in Gender Studies. The questionnaires asked respondents to rate the importance of different competences in Gender Studies Programmes and assess the degree they were implemented. One questionnaire was dedicated to generic competences, the other to specific Gender Studies competences. The Gender Studies Tuning Brochure contains the reference points for the design and delivery of degree programmes in Gender Studies. It is an outcome of carefully combined reflections on what competences might be acquired in different Gender Studies programmes. You will find a larger presentation of the Tuning exercise at our web site www.atgender.eu
On the second day of the conference Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, the current director of the Women & Science Unit in Spain welcomed the participants and gave an overview of Spanish initiatives to enhance the conditions of women scientists and gender scholars. The first key-note speaker professor Chang Pil Wha, President of the Asian Association of Women’s Studies, presented an interesting, touching and insightful lecture on women’s education and the women’s university in South Korea. The historical overview was accompanied by beautiful pictures.
The second key-note speaker Dr. Malin Rönnblom, Umeå University, Sweden, a political scientist and editor of NORA as well as chair of the Swedish association for Gender Studies presented an extensive analysis of the major phenomena in European contemporary politics. She focused particularly on research policies. We hope Malin’s paper soon will be published in a scientific journal. In the Parallel panel & Poster sessions language issues when working with bilingual partners, Gender Studies in Portugal and Italy were discussed in the first panel. In the second one papers on practicing interdisciplinarity in European Gender Studies, writing through the Body and Over/Cross the Borders and Interculturality and Gender draw a huge audience. The third panel dealt with Networking and the Fragen project. Finally Anna Cabo from the Francesca Bonnemaison centre, Barcelone, and Maria Grönroos from the KILDEN information centre, Oslo, gave important contributions of their accumulated experience to ATGENDER and presented the priorities they see for ATGENDER’s communication policies in the future.
Ratified minutes of the GA ATGENDER General Assembly, February 19, 2010, Brussels Attendance: 93 persons.
MINUTES
Opening of the meeting; The meeting was opened by Harriet Silius, Iris van der Tuin and Nicky le Feuvre (chairs) at 17h00.
Approval of agenda and election of one person to ratify the minutes; The agenda was approved. Sandra Prlenda Perkovac, from the Center for Women’s studies in Zagreb was elected to ratify the minutes.
Approval of standing orders; The draft of the standing orders was approved unanimously.
Update of ATGENDER’s activities and future plans: Berteke Waaldijk, member of the board of ATGENDER, announced that the proposal of Athena 4 will be sent next week. It was also announced that Athena 4 was selected as candidate for the Erasmus Price for excellence in fostering social inclusion. Only five groups were selected. The final result will be announced in the 20th of May the final.
Proposals for working groups: The following topics were proposed: queer studies; language; groups from Athena 4 can, possibly, provide a base for ATGENDER working groups; gender studies, feminist technology; reconceptualization of generationality; gender and sexuality studies (proposal to include queer studies in this group and also other contexts besides the European one).
It was singled out the importance of the working groups for non-institutionalized members, as a way to keep their activity within gender related issues. An observation was also made about the need to get a list of members on the website, in order to facilitate the formation of future working groups.
8th European Feminist Conference: Jasmina Lukic, from Central European University, announced that the next European Feminist Conference will take place in Budapest, in May 2012, more specifically between the 1st and 10th. The theme will be defined by ATGENDER.
Other proposals for the board:
5. Nominations for election committee. It was explained that the temporary board is constituted by members of the founding organizations. Several questions were raised, such as how to get members and how to organize a democratic election procedure. It was decided that this ATGENDER general assembly would be open for nominations for the election committee, in order to get a list for the next general assembly. Then the election committee will organize the nominations. Half the board will have to stand down in each election. The number of the board members can be up to 11.
The election for the next board won’t be based in old, non-existent associations. Instead, it will take into account regional representation, disciplinary representation, professional interests and generational representation.
The election committee has to have at least four people plus one secretary from the board. The following names were proposed: Sara De Jong from Aletta, Institute for Women’s History; Sarah Goodman, Centre for Gender Studies, Lund University; Sandra Prlenda, Center for Women’s Studies, Zagreb;
6. Decision on membership fees. The need to clarify the membership categories ‘individual and institutional’ was mentioned. The Board will upload a clarifying document to the website. The general assembly accepted the membership fees proposed by the board.
Vera Fonseca Secretary of the General Assembly
Ratified by:
Harriet Silius Chair of the General Assembly
Sandra Prlenda Perkovac Elected by the GA
Names to faces Vera Fonseca: Vera was born in Setúbal, a sunny region in the cost of Portugal. After graduating in Classical Studies in the University of Lisbon, she decided to come to The Netherlands, almost four years ago, to work as an employer for the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Portuguese Department, in Utrecht. Currently, she is working as a PhD researcher in The Institute for Culture and History (OGC), at Utrecht University, in the Gender Studies group. The opportunity to join ATGENDER came unexpectedly and she is looking forward to grow along with this project.
Genevieve Gauthier:
Genevieve is from Montreal (Canada) and is currently studying in Utrecht. She has a bachelor degree in Philosophy from University of Montreal, a Master degree in Political science from University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), and is now doing the MA in Comparative Women’s Studies in Culture and Politics at Utrecht University. Her interests are mainly concerning gender and development, gender and migration/immigration, and equal opportunities and diversity policies.
Other announcements
Photos and videos of the Brussels conference.
Photos and videos from the first ATGENDER conference that took place in Brussels on 18th and 19th of February 2010 will soon be available on the ATGENDER’s website.
NOI♀SE Summer School 2010 Performing European Feminist Futures: 1968 & 1989 17 August - 28 August, University of Granada, Spain
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Have you always wondered how the time and place in which you live affects your identity? Would you like to situate specific spatio-temporalities in academic, artistic, and activist terms? Do you want to use cutting-edge feminist theories to interrogate the connections between major historical and geo-political events?
Then join the 2010 Summer School! For more information: http://www.atgender.eu/index.php?page=summerschool