We are delighted to announce Sandra Grey‘s Keynote title and abstract:
Dispatching patriarchy one tweet, blog, and Facebook entry at a time?
The world of social media is one both full of emancipatory potential and stultifying gender hierarchi
es. Web-based enclaves can provide safe spaces for feminists to discuss their diverse identities, issues, and needs, but it can simultaneously be an uncivil-civil space. To unpack these tensions and critically engage with debates about navigating the world of social media, identity, and activism, I will draw on social movement scholarship and my experiences as an activist-academic over the past decade. There is little doubt that we need safe spaces as feminists to discuss our diverse identities and formulate plans aimed at dispatching patriarchal structures. However, scholarship and activist knowledge show the job is not one to be done wholly online.
Sandra is an academic in the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Victoria University, Wellington. She is also the current President of the Tertiary Education Union, NZ. Sandra will be delivering her Keynote address at 11am on 25th November 2015. She will also be delivering a workshop on union activism and feminist politics with TEU organiser, Kris Smith and Otago TEU Branch President, Tree La Rooy at 2.30 pm on 24th November 2015.
You can check out the conference’s tentative timetable here: http://transformingfeminisms.noblogs.org/post/2015/09/25/tentative-timetable/