Engenderings is a blog about the role of gender in cultural, social and political life. It brings together a broad range of perspectives to engage with ideas about gender as it operates in local and global culture and society. At the core of Engenderings is the idea that gender is everywhere, shaping not only the way we move through the world – organising human bodies, sexualities, identities – but also the way we relate to the world and to each other, in thought and in action, from political representation to cultural production. Engenderings is about the inflections of gender in everyday life. The Engenderings blog is run by PhD students based at the LSE Department of Gender Studies. It is interdisciplinary in approach and subject matter, with material originating from a range of fields including social and political science, cultural and media studies, literary criticism, arts, philosophy, environmental studies and technology. Engenderings is committed to an open and critical engagement that is responsive to different points of view and is invested in exploring gender as an analytical category.
Each blog post gives the views of the individual author(s), and not the position of the Department of Gender Studies, nor of the London School of Economics. All posts published on Engenderings remain the intellectual property and copyright of the author or authors. Anyone is free to link to or share links to posts published on Engenderings. Unless otherwise indicated, do not reproduce, republish or repost any blog posts on other sites without permission from the author of the post. For repost requests please contact the editorial collective and we will pass your request on to the author. We request that any reposts of original content published on Engenderings acknowledge and link back to Engenderings as the original site of publication but this is at the author’s discretion.
The Engenderings Editorial Collective:
Aiko Holvikivi is a PhD student at the Department of Gender Studies, researching gender training for military and police personnel. Her professional experience includes policy research and capacity building in the field of gender and security sector reform. Aiko studied political science at the Graduate Institute in Geneva and international relations at the University of St Andrews. In addition to academic-in-training, she is a yogi, a podcast enthusiast, and an equestrian.
Alaa El-Mahrakawy was awarded her MSc in Labour, Social Movements and Development from SOAS in London in 2015. She also holds a BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. Her research interests include social movements; feminist and post-colonial theories; the intersections between gender, race and class; gender mobilization in the Middle East, and the struggle for domestic worker rights. Alaa currently serves as a site publisher for the Femme Oasis.
Annette Behrens is a teacher in Oslo, Norway. She has an MSc in Gender Studies from the Department of Gender Studies at the LSE, and has further done research on gender relations, democratic structures and prefigurative pedagogy in activist groups in London.
Billy Holzberg is a PhD candidate at the Department of Gender Studies. He is also associated with the International Inequalities Institute. His PhD project examines what role emotions play in the framing of and public reaction to the ‘long summer of migration’ in Germany in 2015. Before coming to London, Billy studied in Amsterdam, Berlin and Montreal and has been involved in many queer, feminist and postcolonial research and activist groups. He enjoys literature, cinema and getting lost in the city.
Jenny Chanfreau is a PhD candidate at the Department of Gender Studies. Her research looks at gender and class differences in work-family life courses. Jenny holds an MSc in Social Policy (Research) from the LSE, a degree that awakened her inner quant analysis nerd. Jenny’s research interests include the gendered division of paid and unpaid work, including caring and childrearing.
Julia Hartviksen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Gender Studies. Her PhD explores the materiality of violences against women and femicide in postwar Guatemala. She is particularly interested in the political economy of violence against women, feminist historical materialism, extractivism and development. Previously, Julia studied International Studies & Modern Languages at the University of Ottawa, and Global Development Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston, in Canada. Julia enjoys running and hiking.
Koen Slootmaeckers joins the Engenderings collective as an associate editor. He is a lecturer in international politics at City, University of London. His research focuses on the the processes of resisting and promoting LGBT rights. He is particularly interested in the impact of EU Accession processes on the LGBT movement in the Western Balkans, specifically Serbia. Koen is also an research affiliate at Leuven International and European Studies (LINES) at the University of Leuven (Belgium).
Louisa ![ProfilePicGI[1]](https://blogstest.lse.ac.uk/gender/files/2015/09/ProfilePicGI1-150x150.png)
Acciari is a PhD student at the Department of Gender Studies working on the mobilisations of domestic workers in Brazil. Her research interests include social movements; feminist and post-colonial theories; the intersections between gender, race and class; and Brazilian politics. She studied Political Science in Paris before coming to the UK to do Gender Studies. She has also been involved in the student and feminist movements for years and believes in the importance of linking academia to activism and practices of contestation.
Magdalena Mikulak completed her PhD at the Department of Gender Studies. Her doctoral project addresses the question of whether and how politics of sexuality in contemporary, postsocialist Poland are shaped and circumscribed by processes of neoliberalisation, and how differences of class, gender, and location position subjects differently within the landscape of the former. Magdalena is also a guest teacher on the interdisciplinary LSE100 course. When not working, she practices and teaches yoga, and bakes bread.
Melissa Chacón is a PhD candidate at the Department of Gender Studies. Her project looks at lived and embodied experiences of conflict-related and everyday violence in the life course of sexual minorities in Colombia. She holds an MA in Women’s and Gender Studies from Utrecht University and Universidad de Granada, and an MA in Psychosocial Research from Universidad de los Andes. Her research interests include feminist, queer, memory and trauma studies, theories of affect, and visual research methods. She practices photography and enjoys live music.
Niharika Pandit is a PhD candidate at the Department of Gender Studies. Her research examines gender, militarisation and the narratives of ‘home’, specifically in Kashmir. Niharika holds an MA in Gender Studies as a Felix Scholar from SOAS. Prior to PhD, she co-researched a project on reporting of violence against women and girls in Indian newspapers. She has been involved in feminist activist groups and worked as a research and development practitioner in Delhi, India. She likes music, films and exploring spaces.
Tomás Ojeda is a PhD candidate at the Department of Gender Studies. His research examines the political place of Chilean psy disciplines in the making up of the ‘sexual subject of diversity’, by analysing the sexual epistemologies at work in the so-called turn to diversity in contemporary clinical practice. Tomás holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Chile, and has worked as a psychotherapist and as an advisor in sex education in Santiago, Chile.
