Keynote Speakers

Dr. Gabrielle Jamela Hosein has a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Toronto, an M.Phil in Gender and Development Studies from The University of the West Indies, and a Ph.D in Anthropology from University College London. Her current research areas are politics and women’s leadership, Indo-Caribbean feminisms, masculinities and gender-based violence. She is a Lecturer and head of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies and has been involved in Caribbean feminist movement-building for twenty-five years. Her blog, Diary of a Mothering Worker, is published weekly by the Newsday (previously Trinidad Guardian).

Dr. Keridwen N. Luis is lecturer in the departments of anthropology; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; and sociology at Brandeis University, and in the departments of women, gender, and sexuality and sociology at Harvard University’s Continuing Education Program. Her most recent book, Herlands: Exploring the Women’s Land Movement in the United States, came out from the University of Minnesota Press in 2018. Her current research, “Fan Bodies and Fan Performance: Community, Identity, and Intersecting Selves,” is a fieldwork and interview project examining gender, sexuality, race, and disability in science fiction and media fandom, and a book on this research is under contract with Palgrave-MacMillan. Her areas of study include culture theory, queer theory, women’s studies, gender studies, gender theory, nonheternormative sexualities, fandom and fan identity, medical anthropology, anthropology of the body, intentional communities, consciously created culture, folklore and magical practice.

Dr. Awino’s teaching and research interests lie in the nexus between gender, sexuality, security and nation/state making projects as they occur in conflict and post-conflict societies. She remain deeply attentive to power in knowledge production and transfer processes and explore these dynamics through her methodological and pedagogical choices in her research and in the classroom. Prior to her appointment at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, Dr. Awino worked in the development sector across various sub-regions in Africa for over decade, supporting women rights organisations and local movements in building local capacities for peace. This work remains central to her scholarship and teaching and is illustrated in ongoing support to feminist social justice movements in Africa and feminist movement building organisations globally.