Webinar

Date: 7^th April, 1pm via Zoom

Disrupting Coloniality in Feminist Teaching and Learning

Speakers: (opens in a new window)Radhika Govinda (Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Acting Director, genderED) University of Edinburgh, UK

Chair: (opens in a new window)Aisling Swaine (Prof. of Gender Studies, UCD School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice)

Abstract: In this talk, Dr. Govinda critically examines how white privilege and northern hegemony in knowledge production play out in contemporary feminist classrooms, what the pedagogical challenges of engaging with questions of difference in these classrooms are, what intersectionality as critical pedagogy has to offer specifically when it comes to decolonising these classrooms, how global neoliberal logics affect this process of decolonising, and what politics of emotions the teacher and the students must navigate in this process. Or, you could say that this talk is a reflexive account of the stories I have heard and the stories I tell, and how I tell them in feminist classrooms as an anti-caste, anti-racist, upper-caste, middle class, woman of colour feminist academic from the global south, now teaching about gender in the global south to predominantly white women students, and asserting the need to decolonise feminist knowledge production at an elite institution of higher education in the global north. I envisage these stories as a way of engaging in a dialogue with fellow teachers and students on why challenging dominance of hegemonic feminisms and decentring western feminist knowledge are urgent today.  

Bio: Radhika Govinda is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and the Director of genderED, the University of Edinburgh's interdisciplinary hub in gender and sexualities studies. She has an MA from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), France and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK. Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh, she held a Lectureship in Gender Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi, India. Her research and teaching practice focus on the gender politics of development, intersectionality and feminist knowledge production. She was the UK Lead on the recently concluded UGC-UKIERI funded project, ‘Teaching Feminisms, Transforming Lives: Questions of Identity, Pedagogy and Violence in India and the UK’, which culminated in the edited collection, Doing Feminisms in the Academy in India and the UK (Zubaan 2020). She is currently working on a monograph titled Feminist Politics, Intersectionality and Knowledge Production (under contract with Routledge). 

Organised by: Professor Aisling Swaine

For more information please contact (opens in a new window)Aisling.Swaine@ucd.ie