A hundred experts on gendered violence, representing all continents of the world, gathered in Uppsala for Gendering Violence: Feminist Interventions in Contemporary Research, 2-4 December 2009. During these days, participants shared the talks of the brilliant and innovative key notes: Yakin Erturk spoke of how to demystify cultural discourses, Sara Scott unveiled the extreme and everyday in ritual abuse, Eva Lundgren shared her analysis on how feminist research is given the third degree, and Jenny Kitzinger fleshed out on how the media frame sexual abuse.
Strong and moving stories about violence was also manifested through art documentaries. Nora Amin presented the Egyptian dance film “Intersections of Beauty and Fear”, and Nükhet Sirman the documentary “Ya Umutta Birtese” (What if hope also ends) – the latter a documentary about the death of 25 women in Turkey.
The participants presented and discussed 50 different papers on how to gender violence. The range and quality of the papers expressed research on gendered violence as a lively and wide field. The following disussions and discussions throughout the conference made it evident that similar themes and struggles occur in many different contexts. One example of this is how connections between culture and violence are used in the creation of “the other”, another was similarities in the patterns on current backlashes facing feminist research all over the world.
The great interest in Gendering Violence beforehand, and the atmosphere during the conference, makes it clear that we together filled a gap. The academic arena seldom offer international meeting points where discussions on gender and violence – and the meaning of gendering violence – are held on a high enough level. For this reason Gendering Violence will continue. We have planned for the second conference to take place in May 2011. Meanwhile we will publish a book from this conference. We are working on the possibility for the presenters to upload their papers presented during the conference.
Welcome – and welcome back – to Gendering Violence! Keep yourself updated through this website.