News

We are very pleased to announce that Emeritus Professor Jim Beckford's new book is now available (both in hardback and e-book format):

Sarah Harvey, Silke Steidinger and James A. Beckford (eds) New Religious Movements and Counselling: Academic, Professional and Personal Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2018, xiii + 248pp.

ISBN: 978-1-4724-7271-7

Hidden Histories is an alternative lecture series run by staff and students at Warwick. The series is hosted by the Students' Union, and is supported by Sociology, as well as English and Comparative Literary Studies, History, PAIS, and the School for Cross-Faculty studies.

The first lecture in the series will take place on 25 Jan at 19:00 in SO.21.

Following the award of the Athena SWAN bronze award, Maria, Nickie, and Ruth attended the awards ceremony in Glasgow to accept the award.

From L - R: Dr Maria do Mar Pereira, Professor Nickie Charles, and Dr Ruth Pearce.

• Find out more about the Athena SWAN award on the Equality Challenge Unit website.
• Find out more about the department's work towards the award (and following the award!) on our Athena SWAN webpage.

Over the past few months, Professor Akwugo Emejulu has worked on a range of events focused on Black Feminism, intersectionality, and higher education.

Conference: Black Feminism, Womanism and the Politics of Women of Colour - Amsterdam

On 7th October 2017 in Amsterdam, Prof. Emejulu co-organised the 2nd Annual Black Feminism, Womanism and the Politics of Women of Colour in Europe conference. This event attracted 159 women of colour artists, activists, practitioners and scholars from across Europe and North America.

• Check out the live tweets from the day here: https://storify.com/Akwugo/black-feminism-womanism-politics-of-women-of-colou 
• The conference programme here https://woceuropeconference.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/woceurope-programme-final-5oct17.pdf 
• and some critical reflections on the day from conference participants here https://woceuropeconference.wordpress.com/blog/ 

Keynote: Intersectionality: A Challenge to the Academy - Equality Challenge Unit

Prof. Emejulu was invited to give a keynote talk, 'Intersectionality: A Challenge to the Academy', to the Equality Challenge Unit's annual conference on 7th November 2017 in Birmingham. Watch her talk on YouTube.

Panel: Black Feminism and Post-Cyber Feminism - Institute of Contemporary Arts

On 18th November 2017 at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, Prof. Emejulu co-organised and chaired the event, Black Feminism and Post-Cyber Feminism as part of the Post-Cyber Feminist International season at the ICA. Listen to the panel discussion on the ICA website.

Keynote lecture: Towards a Fugitive Feminism - Gender Research Centre Annual Lecture

This week Dr Hila Zaban published an article in Haaretz (an Israeli newspaper which is equivalent to The Guardian) following her current research on British Jews.

The article was published in Hebrew first and also in the English edition available below. 

Hila has also been invited to discuss the topic on an Israeli TV show two weeks from now.

• Download the article (PDF)

Ahead of her keynote address at the ECU’s annual conference (Birmingham, 6 - 7 Novembemer 2017), Professor Emejulu spoke to the Times Higher about tackling inequalities in Higher Education.

Anthony King (Warwick)

 The Decision Point: command collectivism in the twenty-first century

 4^th December 5pm

 S0.20

All welcome!

Early Career Fellowships aim to provide career development opportunities for those who are at a relatively early stage of their academic careers, but who have a proven record of research. The expectation is that Fellows should undertake a significant piece of publishable work during their tenure, and that the Fellowships should lead to a more permanent academic position. Approximately 100 Fellowships will be available in 2018. Fellowships can be held at universities or at other institutions of higher education in the UK.

The Department is now receiving applications for departmental support.

• Find out more...

Dr Maria do Mar Pereira was a keynote speaker at the international conference Doing Science – Doing Excellence – Doing Inequalities, at Ruhr University – Bochum, in Germany.

The conference brought together researchers, equality practitioners, and scientific policy-makers from across Europe to discuss the relationship between scientific excellence and gender equality, and particularly the ways in which contemporary definitions of scientific excellence normalise and reproduce problematic gender inequalities.

Maria do Mar’s very well received keynote address was based on her new book Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship: an Ethnography of Academia (Routledge, 2017) and discussed the association of scientific excellence with intense productivity in contemporary universities. Maria do Mar argued that this association can paradoxically undermine the excellence of the knowledge we produce, because it is harder (and sometimes impossible) to create excellent knowledge in academic cultures of intense and individualised labour, in which many academics struggle to find the time necessary not just to write their research, but also to read, peer review and engage with other colleagues’ work.

Dr Maria do Mar Pereira's participation in this conference was supported by departmental conference funding.

The Rafto Foundation has awarded the 2017 Rafto Prize to Parveena Ahangar (leader and co-founder of The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons - APDP) and Parvez Imroz (President of the Jammu-Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society) for their extraordinary work on campaigning for basic human rights in Indian-held Kashmir, in one of the world’s most militarized zones.

For more information regarding the APDP, please see http://apdpkashmir.com. For more information about JKCCS, see: https://jkccs.wordpress.com.

On the 4^th of November, Dr. Goldie Osuri participated in a public conference held by the Rafto Foundation in advance of the award ceremony. At the public conference, the Rafto laureates gave their keynote speeches on human rights in Kashmir. Alongside other experts, Dr. Osuri spoke on Human Rights and International Solidarity - a talk directed at an international human rights community regarding recommendations addressing human rights in Kashmir.

You can see a video of Dr Osuri's talk here: http://jammukashmir.tv/index.php/video/663/goldie-osuri–-associate-professor-at-the-department-of-sociology-university-of-warwick/.

For more information about the public conference, visit the Rafto webpage https://www.rafto.no/events/the-2017-rafto-conference