Doing Gender Studies: A Global (South) Conversation

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (CIGS) at the University of Leeds invites you to Gender Studies in the Global South, part of the CIGS 30th Anniversary Critical Futures Series, Gender Studies for Uncertain Times.

Thursday 19 November 2026, online 2pm UK | 4pm South Africa | 11am Chile | 10am Trinidad and Tobago Register via Ticket Tailor: [TICKET TAILOR LINK] The Teams joining link will be sent to everyone who registers.

Facilitated by Dr Lata Narayanaswamy (University of Leeds), the event brings together leaders of gender studies centres and research from Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa and Chile. Speakers will reflect on the opportunities, challenges and future directions of the field in their own contexts, while exploring what these perspectives can contribute to debates about the future of gender research, politics and academia globally.

Speakers

Dr Shelene Gomes is a Sociocultural Anthropologist at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus, Trinidad and Tobago, and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Cape Town. Her research explores social reproduction and migration within the Caribbean care economy and care society. She is the author of Cosmopolitanism from the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and co-editor of Race, Class, and Nationalism in the Twenty-First-Century Caribbean (University of Georgia Press, 2024). She is principal investigator of Ageing Infrastructure in Trinidad and Tobago, a community-based study into decent housing for older people. Her research with transnational families and the care of older persons in the Caribbean has been included in T20 G20 policy briefs. She is writing a monograph on the logics of care in the multicultural Caribbean.

Dr Benita Moolman is an Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town, where she is Head of the African Feminist Studies Department and Director of the African Gender Institute. She teaches African feminist theories and activisms, African post and decolonial feminist theory, and African feminist knowing and knowledge-making. Her research interests are ending sexual and gender-based violence, masculinities, violence against women social movements, and narrative methodologies. She has worked at Rape Crisis Cape Town. She holds an MPhil in Women and Gender Studies (University of the Western Cape) and a DPhil in African Feminist Geography (UC Davis).

Dr Natalia Cárdenas Marín is Director of the Centre for Gender Studies (CEG-UCT) at Universidad Católica de Temuco, Chile. She is a lawyer from Universidad del Rosario, Colombia, specialising in Human Rights and Constitutional Law, and holds a PhD in Intercultural Studies from Universidad Católica de Temuco. She has worked in NGOs, international organisations and academic institutions. Her research interests include gender, migration, international human rights law and legal feminisms.

Facilitator

Dr Lata Narayanaswamy is Associate Professor in the Politics of Global Development in the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), University of Leeds. Her research critically reflects on gendered/intersectional and post/decolonial dynamics of development knowledge and its perceived contribution to addressing global development challenges.