Keynote Speaker

Dr. Halimah DeShong
Title: “Gender and Sexuality in the 21st Century: Why does it Matter”
Head of Institute for Gender & Development Studies: Nita Barrow Unit
The University of the West Indies
Barbados
Biography
Dr. Halimah DeShong is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the IGDS:NBU. She is an experienced feminist researcher, published in the areas of gendered and gender-based violence, feminist methodologies, anti-colonial feminisms, qualitative interviewing and analysis. She is the co-editor (with Professor Kamala Kempadoo) of Methodologies in Caribbean Research on Gender & Sexuality (2020) and is currently completing another book length manuscript on violence, the coloniality of gender and change. Her scholarly work appears in a wide range of peer-reviewed academic journals and books. She is joint editor of four special issues on Feminist Methodologies; Men and Masculinities; and Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in the Caribbean. Dr. DeShong has advised Caribbean governments on gender-based violence policies and laws, is the author of the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) National Gender-based Violence Action Plan and has jointly designed a GBV/HFLE curriculum for post-secondary school students in SVG (with Dr. Tonya Haynes). She was also the lead researcher and author of the qualitative component of the UN Women/CARICOM/Caribbean Development Bank Women’s Health Survey on violence against women in Grenada.
Dr. DeShong served as an Ambassador and Second Deputy Permanent Representative at the Permanent Mission of the Government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to the United Nations. She was SVG’s expert, during the country’s two-year tenure (January 2020 to December 2021) on the United Nations Security Council on Women, Peace and Security; Children and Armed Conflict; Youth, Peace and Security; and the Protection of Civilians. In addition to this, she also covered the situations in Mali, Somalia, Guinea-Bissau, and West Africa and the Sahel. Animating her teaching, public service, scholarship and outreach is a concern for ending the enduring effects of complex systems of violence.

Dr. Nedine Moonsamy
Title: “Afrofeminist Intimacies: Artificial Intelligence and Women in the African Technoscientific Imaginary”
Faculty of Humanities
University of Johannesburg,
South Africa
Biography
Nedine Moonsamy is an Associate Professor in the English department at the University of Johannesburg. She is currently writing a monograph on contemporary South African Fiction and otherwise conducts research on science fiction in Africa. Her debut novel, The Unfamous Five (Modjaji Books, 2019) was shortlisted for the HSS Fiction Award (2021), and her poetry was shortlisted for the inaugural New Contrast National Poetry Award (2021).

Dr. Alexis Palfreyman
Title: “The Pain Pathway: The first gender conscious model for understanding how women and girls choose and use self-harm through the case of Sri Lanka”
Founder and Co-director
The Centre for Impact on Violence and Health (CIVAH)
Honorary Research Fellow, University College London (UCL)
Biography
Dr. Alexis Palfreyman is an interdisciplinary scholar using public health and social science approaches to bridge research in suicidology, global mental health, violence, and perinatal, sexual and reproductive health and rights. Drawing on the strengths of numerous disciplines, her work aims to advance gender justice in health, and improve behaviours and outcomes, service access and delivery for underserved populations, with particular commitment to (perinatal) women and girls. In her 16+ years in global health, she has worked in academia, charity, UN and consulting sectors, with stakeholders from grassroot communities through private, government, and global health actors in Global North and South settings. Most recently, she led the VAMHSA (Violence and Mental Health in South Asia) Sri Lanka site, as part of a UK NIHR-funded Global Health Research Group developing mental health resources for survivors of violence in South Asia. She is the founder and co-director of the Centre for Impact on Violence and Health (CIVAH) in Sri Lanka and the UK, and an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London where she continues her much-valued role teaching and supervising new generations of global health practitioners.
plenary Speaker

Prof. Anne Cronin
Title: "The Gendered Dynamics of Promotional Culture in the 21st Century: Why it Matters"
Centre for Gender Studies
Lancaster University
United Kingdom
Biography
Prof. Cronin is a Professor of Cultural Sociology at Lancaster University and her research focuses on the intersection of gender and promotional culture, specifically in the areas of advertising, marketing, and public relations. She has contributed to discussions on gender studies, consumer culture, visual culture, cultural economy, and urban studies. Her research on gender studies includes a focus on the production of gender through couple culture and heteronormativity, as well as gender in the making of commercial worlds. Additionally, she has explored the gendered aspects of urban spaces, including the role of genre and mediation in shaping these spaces. She has published a co-edited special issue of Feminist Review on ‘Urban Space’ with Liz Oakley-Brown, as well as an edited collection on consumption. Another area of her work involves exploring the connections between advertising, consumer citizenship, and gender images and rights.
Organized By

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