Today’s episode is looking at epistemologies in pandemic inequalities and applying feminist consciousness to address violence against women during global pandemic. We close this year’s 16 days of activism campaign against gender-based violence by asking the question: Where are the feminists? And we point to the gaps in pandemic response from a public health and feminist perspective.

Kalevera Imungu is a Kenyan Feminist, Gender and Diversity Specialist and Consultant. She has experience in feminist advocacy, programming and policy analysis in the areas of economic justice, women’s leadership and a host of others. When she is not smashing the patriarchy in her work, she is a struggling plan mom.

Zainab Chisenga is a gender and women’s rights specialist and consultant from Malawi. Her areas of expertise are in women’s political and civic participation, economic justice, movement building, positive masculinities and gender-based violence thematic areas. Outside her activism, she enjoys books and serene spaces.

Jessy Gondwe is health practitioner and gender advocate from Malawi. She has experience in health research, front line health care delivery, sexual and reproductive health and gender programming in Southern and Eastern Africa. She is passionate in applying gender lens in addressing health problems and health systems strengthening. Aside her work, she enjoys hanging out with friends and family.

Myriam Sfeir Murad is joining us from Lebanon via the ERASMUS staff exchange program. Myriam joined the Arab Institute for Women (AiW) in 1996 and is currently the institute's Director. Previously she served as senior managing editor of Al-Raida, the double-blind peer-reviewed journal published by AiW. On this episode we talk about AiW and their work in Lebanon and the Arab Region more broadly.

The new Netflix original movie Moxie is about a shy 16-year-old girl, who is inspired by her mum's rebellious past and a confident new friend to publish an anonymous zine calling out sexism at her school. So what is this movie? An honest attempt at making feminism edible for the masses or just another example of white women being pushed to foreground of the feminist movement? We talked to Nikkita Hamar Patterson, lecturer in film studies at the University of Iceland, and our resident senior researcher Giti Chandra to find out.

This episode is dedicated to the tireless work of the GEST alumni. We present current projects that former GEST fellows are currently involved in, and we speak to the recipient of the GEST Alumni Fund grant 2020 Chinenye Anekwe, who explains how and why she became involved in the field of gender and energy.

Dr Islah Jad is Associate Professor in Gender, Development and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University where she began teaching in 1984. She is a founding member of the Women’s Studies Institute at Birzeit University and its MA programme. We speak to her about her latest book 'Palestinian Women's Activism: Nationalism, Secularism, Islamism' in which Jad explores the women's movement in Palestine against the backdrop of a historical and political landscape marked by internal tensions and contradictions, as well as an all-encompassing Israeli occupation.

In our third installment of our ERASMUS+ series, we speak to Linda Gusia, who is a feminist activist and lecturer at the department of Sociology at the University of Prishtina in Kosovo. Her research has focused on topics of gender, nationalism, activism, representation, public space, memory and violence. As part of her PhD thesis she interrogated ambiguities of nationalism and gender by looking both at the women's movement in Kosovo and sexual violence as a strategy of war, centering on the politics of gender representation visually and textually. She holds a PhD from University of Prishtina (2016) and MA from NYU (2003). Linda was co-curator and researcher in the multimedia art exhibition on women’s peaceful resistance in Kosovo. She co-founded the University Program for Gender Studies and Research, UP. She was visiting research scholar and fellow at the Gender Research Institute, Dartmouth College, and fellow for five years of the Academic Fellowship Program OSI. She is currently a PI of the Changing the Story Phase 2 ECR project: The Making of the Museum of Education: Memory, violence and resistance as seen by artists, youth and institutions.

Linda is the Principal Investigator of the Phase 2 Kosovo project The Making of the Museum of Education and Co-Investigator of the Phase 2 Large Grant Project ‘ReSpace.’

Myriam Sfeir is the director of the Arab Institute for Women (AiW) at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. Previously she served as senior managing editor of Al-Raida, the double-blind peer-reviewed journal published by AiW. She has over twenty five years of experience working in the area of women’s rights and gender equality and ample experience doing research, expert analysis, trainings, and teaching. She is an authority on the women’s movement in Lebanon and has worked extensively on several groundbreaking projects related to oral history, movement building, marginalized groups and has organized several international and regional conferences, film festivals, and panels that address gender rights and justice. She earned her Bachelor degree in Philosophy from the American University of Beirut and her Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Women’s Studies from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom.

In the first of a series of podcasts in which we engage in conversation with some of the brightest minds in gender and diversity studies from our ERASMUS+ partner universities, we speak to Tonya Haynes, lecturer and interim Head and Coordinator of Graduate Programmes at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Nita Barrow Unit, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus in Barbados. Her projects and research is animated around the liberatory potential of Carribbean feminist thought, and her institute is involved in a range of projects that not only address gender issues, but are part of a much larger movement that ties in with the decolonization of the west indies.

Marai Larasi is one of the contributors to the 'Routledge Handbook of the Politics of MeToo Movement'. She is an advocate, community organiser, consultant, and educator, whose work deliberately centres the journeys, narratives, knowledge and expertise of Black / Global Majority women and girls. For over 25 years, her social justice practice and activism has focused primarily on ending violence against women and girls. Today we talk to her about the tension between the poetic flow of activist expression and the linearity of academic writing, plantation feminism (a term she coins in the book), and the importance of getting comfortable with discomfort when we’re trying to build solidarity with one another.

Photo credit: Michelle Beatty

To celebrate the coming publication of The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of the #MeToo movement, we speak to a series of activists from around the world about what the #MeToo movement looks like in different national contexts. On this episode we speak to former GEST fellow Thelma Kaliu from Malawi. Thelma is a practitioner in gender, education, child protection, youth empowerment, and development. She has worked for a number of prolific organisations, including UN Women and Girls Empowerment Network. Today she is a project coordinator at Plan International.