Gender and Sexuality Seminars
The Gender and Sexuality Seminars Series is convened by the Middle East Centre as part of its wider programme of events. The series covers a broad range of topics — including gender, sexuality, legal and social change, migration, digital activism, and the cultural and historical experiences of women and gendered communities across the Middle East and its diasporas.
History
The Series is a rebranding and continuation of a long-running workshop, The Women’s Rights Research Seminar (WRRS). Under the title WRRS, it has been a consistent feature of intellectual life in the Middle East Centre for well over a decade, and continues to deal with key issues of regional import. The original founding members of the WRRS were Nazila Ghanea, Soraya Tremayne, Camillia El-Solh, Anna Enayat, and Mastan Ebtehaj (formerly the Middle East Centre Librarian). Later conveners to join were Marilyn Booth and Binesh Hass, and Maryam Alemzadeh, until its integration within the Middle East Centre’s wider programming under the new series name, Gender and Sexuality Seminars.
It was initially founded in 2009 with the aim of both assessing and steering interdisciplinary scholarly research on women in Iran. Since then, the research group has broadened to include the wider Middle East and North Africa region, and more recently, diasporic communities and issues of migration worldwide. Today, this lively series seeks to present current research on the changing Middle East, and how development and globalization have affected women’s rights. Seminars have also included a historical dimension, exploring the impact of women’s past contributions and their impact on women’s experiences and gender politics in the present-day Middle East.
Over the years, the seminar series has included over 80 speakers. Predominantly scholars from universities in the UK, as well as researchers and practitioners from charities, aid agencies, and health and educational organisations engaged in working on and with women in the Middle East. One of this series’ many strengths is precisely its commitment to recognising the interface between scholarly work and activism, and to thinking about the differences and consonances amongst meanings of ‘feminism’: historically, in today’s academy, and amongst diverse constituencies and practitioners.
The wide range of topics addressed at the seminars have included: legal changes in women’s status; population and demographic transformation affecting the position of women in society; migration and refugee situations; the impact of distance learning reaching women living under authoritarian regimes; the impact of digital technologies on women’s rights; women’s reproductive and sexual rights; women as writers and artists and the impacts of that on women’s status; women as feminists historically.
