Join us for an online discussion next Wednesday November 23, 2022 from 3 pm till 4.30 pm (CET) (pre-registration latest Tuesday November 22 here)

Organised by SEXDEM in collaboration with LEGS research team

On the initiative of Anambar Aditya Chaudhury, for this third online SEXDEM event, we have invited Amrita Sarkar and Reubs Walsh to talk about their activist, research, artistic and scholarly activities. Amrita Sarkar has been working for transgender community for more than two decades in India and transnationally, counselling, making films and working in capacity building initiatives among other things. Reubs Walsh is a researcher and trans activist whose ongoing research in cognitive neuroscience deals with transgender health. Both are part of TPATH (Transgender Professional Association for Transgender Health) and will talk to us about their ongoing projects.

Speakers: Amrita Sarkar and Reubs Walsh

Organizers: Anambar Aditya Chaudhury (PhD student LEGS) and Heta Rundgren (postdoctoral researcher SEXDEM and LEGS)

Don’t forget to register 22 November latest by filling out this short form. We will share the zoom link the day before the event with registered participants.

Here’s how our guests describe their work:

Amrita Sarkar

Amrita Sarkar has working for the LGBTIQ+ community and especially for the transgender community for more than two decades and has been involved in numerous capacity building initiatives for the transgender communities at the national and international level. She is one of the founding members and the Secretary of IRGT – A Global Network of Trans Women and HIV. She is a member of TPATH (Transgender Professional Association for Transgender Health), IPATH and a Faculty Member of WPATH (World Professionals Association for Transgender Health). She is a part of the Transgender Technical Working Group, formed by the National AIDS Control Organisation. Amrita is currently working as the Advisor: Transgender Wellbeing and Advocacy, at Alliance India, Delhi.

In India, she led various programmes designed for the transgender community. One of them was to help build the capacity of trans-led organisations, which was supported by SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and was India’s first national level trans capacity building programme. She has been a part of the core working group formed by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), India to design trans specific intervention programmes under NACP IV and V (National AIDS Control Programme – Phase IV and V).From time to time, she was involved in spreading awareness around the individuals identified with non-binary sexuality and gender identify through educational institutes, corporates etc.

She has also made three films on transgender issues. She is a trained counsellor and has completed her post-graduation in social welfare. She has received an Honorary PhD for her work for the transgender community members.

Reubs Walsh

Reubs J Walsh is a founding member of TPATH (the transgender professionals association for transgender health), a trustee of GIRES (the gender identity research and education society), and a junior fellow and the press officer for CATS (the center for applied trans studies).

They are presently a PhD candidate in clinical, neuro- and developmental psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where they have been studying role of the social environment and social-cognitive development in mental health risk, mostly in a community sample of adolescents as part of the #SOCONNeCT project, in which they’ve focussed on how personal and social identity interact with cognitions, behaviours and the social environment to determine mental health outcomes, using sociometric, behavioural and dynamic-systems methodologies alongside self-report psychometrics. They've also been investigating how these processes differ in autistic and trans people, and how those differences might arise. They hope that by examining these social processes from a cognitive neuroscience perspective we will be able to develop stronger theoretical frameworks that can integrate across bioreductionist, (computational) cognitive, and social levels of analysis.

They also enjoy their many collaborative relationships which allow them to work on projects investigating such diverse topics as the neuropsychology of political conflict, the neuroendocrinology of adolescent self-other distinction, and transgender mental and physical health.

They plan to complete their postdoctoral studies at the Einstein lab in the University of Toronto, where they will investigate the contributions of various biological and biopsychosocial processes related to gender/sex to the healthy ageing of brains, using a gender-diverse sample and a mixture of qualitative, behavioural, biomedical and (principally) multimodal neuroimaging methods to begin to disentangle these effects. They hope to be able to shed some light on the role of social and biological correlates of gender in cognitive ageing, dementia, and emotional brain-health in older adults, as well as opportunities for improvements in trans-specific healthcare, especially in older adults.

Join us for the online roundtable discussion on December 15, 2020, 14-16 (CET) / 15-17 (EET) (pre-registration by Dec 14)

Organised by project SEXDEM in collaboration with LEGS research team

Sexuality and Democracy: Exploring the links

This roundtable aims to kick off a discussion on the complicated interplay between sexuality and democracy. It is motivated by current political circumstances marked by the political struggles around gender and sexuality and the challenges right-wing populism poses to progressive gender and sexual politics and the dominant regimes of liberal democracy.

What are the links between sexuality and democracy? What is the role of democracy in establishing, maintaining, or challenging regulations in forming close and intimate relations? Does democracy inevitably lead to the loosening of sexual norms and increasing sexual emancipation? What kind of challenges does the contemporary populist moment pose to both democracy and sexual politics?

We hope to address and discuss some of these questions with everyone present, after short preliminary speeches and comments from our guests and a brief presentation of the SEXDEM project.

Speakers and commentators:

Éric Fassin, Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, University Paris 8, France.

Jenny Gunnarsson Payne, Professor of European Ethnology, Department for Historical and Contemporary Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden

Ilana Eloit, Postdoctoral Researcher at C.N.R.S. (LEGS), France

Mahdis Sadeghipouya, PhD Student, Paris 8 University, LEGS

Organizers:

SEXDEM, Sexuality and Democracy project funded by Kone Foundation (Finland)

Katja Kahlina (University of Helsinki), Heta Rundgren (LEGS), and Riikka Taavetti (University of Helsinki)

In collaboration with UMR LEGS, Laboratoire d’Etudes de genre et de sexualité (C.N.R.S., Paris 8, Paris Nanterre)

You’re welcome to join the discussion, please register for the event by filling out this short form.

We will share the zoom link with those who register before December 14, 2020.

SEXDEM in collaboration with SKY doctoral program at the University of Helsinki organizes an online Christina talk (SKY Advanced Research Seminar) on Monday, November 30, 16-18 Eastern European Time (15-17 CET)

Associate Professor Elżbieta Korolczuk (Södertörn University & University of Warsaw): Conceptualizing the relation between right-wing populism and (anti)gender: an opportunistic synergy

The lecture will offer a conceptualization of the relationship between populism and gender, based on the analysis of anti-gender campaigns in Europe, with specific focus on the Polish case. Rather than looking for specific gendered aspects of populism as an ideology, I will examine an opportunistic synergy between the right-wing parties and ultraconservative groups opposing “gender ideology.” Opportunistic synergy is a dynamic, which includes political alliances, ideological affinities and organizational ties, and plays out on two distinct levels: ideological/discursive and strategic/organizational (Graff and Korolczuk 2021). Since populism is not a robust ideological project, it readily feeds on ideas, affects and narrative structures promoted by the anti-gender movement, albeit often in an opportunistic and selective fashion. Simultaneously, the actors behind anti-gender campaigns use the organizational resources that right-wing parties offer, especially in contexts such as Poland where the latter are in power. What facilitates this collusion is the fact that the ultraconservative critiques of “gender” have indeed been framed in populist terms. The movement presents itself as a necessary and courageous defense of “the people” (often in their private roles as parents) against powerful and foreign “liberal elites,” with “gender ideology” emphatically identified as a modern version of western colonialism.

Bio

Elżbieta Korolczuk is an Associate professor in sociology, who works at Södertörn University in Stockholm and American Studies Center, Warsaw University. Her research interests involve social movements, civil society and anti-gender mobilizations. She published numerous articles and book chapters, as well as books: Civil Society Revisited: Lessons from Poland (co-edited with Kerstin Jacobsson, Berghahn Books, 2017) and Rebellious Parents. Parental Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia (co-edited with Katalin Fábián, Indiana University Press, 2017). Recently, she co-authored a book Bunt kobiet. Czarne Protesty i Strajki Kobiet [Women’s Rebellion. Black Protests and Women’s Strikes] with Beata Kowalska, Jennifer Ramme and Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez, published by European Solidarity Centre in 2019, and a research monograph Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment with Agnieszka Graff (forthcoming in Routledge). She is also a commentator and a long-time women’s and human rights activist.

Talk will be chaired by Katja Kahlina and Tuija Pulkkinen.