NOG Research Day: ‘Living a Feminist Life in Neoliberal Academia’

The Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG) hosts the annual National Research Day, held this year at the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University. This year the National Research Day is called ‘Living a Feminist Life in Neoliberal Academia’.

The title of this year’s NOG Research Day takes its inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s monograph Living a Feminist Life. Ahmed reminds us that as feminists, we experience the devastating effects of racism, genderism, ableism, ageism, homo- and transphobia on a daily basis. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the ongoing neoliberalization of academia, with its emphasis on the marketing of knowledge, and on surveillance and control. This market model of academia has been incorporated into the universities, for example through the emphasis on ‘earning power’, the bureaucratization of student-teacher relationships, and an increasingly internalized ‘audit culture’ that seeks to reduce everyone and everything to quantifiable data or measurable ‘output’. Therefore, the main question of the NOG Research Day is: “Is it still possible to lead a feminist life in neoliberal academia?”
Living a feminist life means being constantly aware of interlocking socio-political hierarchies, structural injustices, and many forms of exploitation. It is a life that tries to understand how these practices of domination work in order to question and then overcome them, whether they are structured around gender, race, religion, age, ability, or sexual orientation. At the same time, living a feminist life is a practice of freedom, a way of enabling and empowering ourselves and others, a collective effort to build feminist, queer, decolonial and sustainable worlds. How can we foster these modes of critical and creative thinking, making, and doing within an academic climate where the gap between our everyday work and a shared feminist commitment to progressive social change seems to be growing?

Format of the day:
The day will start with a welcome by Professor Rosemarie Buikema, director of the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies and Chair of the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University.
Professor Philomena Essed (Antioch University and affiliated researcher of the UU Graduate Gender Programme) will open the thematic programme with a key note followed by short responses and discussion with the audience.
After lunch Professor Marieke van den Brink will share the outcomes of the study concerning scientific harassment in Dutch academia.
The Research Day will be concluded with a plenary roundtable discussion with the NOG Board and Curriculum Commission followed by Q and A with the audience and drinks.

Preliminary programme:
10.00 – 10.30 hrs: Registration and coffee
10.30 – 10.45 hrs: Welcome
10.45 – 11.30 hrs: Keynote Philomena Essed
11.30 – 11.45 hrs: Short responses
11.45 – 12.30 hrs: Discussion
12.30 – 13.45 hrs: Lunch break
13.45 – 14.45 hrs: Marieke van den Brink presents report ‘Scientific harassment in Dutch Academia’ and discussion
14.45 – 15.00 hrs: Break
15.00 – 17.00 hrs: Panel with NOG Board and Curriculum Committee and Philomena Essed
17.00 – 18.00 hrs: Drinks

Language:
The language of the day is English.

Registration:
Please email nog@uu.nl before June 5, 2019 if you wish to attend the National Research Day Doing Gender in the Netherlands. To organize this National Research Day we ask for a contribution of €15 from every attendee for tea, coffee, lunch and drinks, to be paid in cash at the registration desk on the day.

More information:
The Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG) hosted at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) provides a platform for gender sensitive and postcolonial research. Since 1995, the NOG has offered a highly successful training programme and research environment for postgraduate students, PhD students and senior researchers. The NOG teaching and research staff consists of an international team of professors and senior lecturers from various universities. The NOG is a top European programme and plays a central role in European cooperation on research and training in the area of Gender and Postcolonial studies. It has an excellent, long-standing international reputation for its pioneering work in the field of literary, cultural, philosophical, anthropological and epistemological feminist studies. It offers one of Europe’s most advanced interdisciplinary teaching and research programmes in the humanities and social sciences, with a core curriculum on feminist theory, issues of difference and diversity, gender and postcolonialism. In addition, the NOG is involved in European and international projects such as the InterGender network (coordinated by Linkoping University, with other Swedish partner universities and international universities such as Humboldt University and Helsinki University) RINGS, Marie Curie GRACE and ATGENDER, to establish a European joint PhD curriculum in Gender Studies.

The NOG Board consists of Prof. Rosemarie Buikema (Utrecht University, Graduate Gender Programme and director of the NOG), Prof. Lies Wesseling (Maastricht University, Centre for Gender and Diversity), Prof. Marieke van den Brink (Radboud University Nijmegen, Gender and Diversity Studies), Dr. Liza Mügge (University of Amsterdam, Research Center for Gender and Sexuality) and Dr. Liesbeth Minnaard (Leiden University). The NOG Curriculum Commission consists of Dr. Kathrin Thiele (Utrecht University, chair of the Curriculum Commission), Dr. Louis van den Hengel (Maastricht University), Dr. Geertje Mak (Radboud University Nijmegen), Dr. Marie-Louise Janssen (University of Amsterdam) and Dr. Eliza Steinbock (Leiden University).