Feminist Research Alliance Workshop
Founded in 2010, the Feminist Research Alliance Workshop advances and energizes interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration among feminist scholars locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. At our convivial meetings, faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars present and discuss research-in-progress. A fertile space for idea-incubation, the workshop also is community-building, enabling students and faculty to network with potential committee members, mentors, and colleagues beyond the boundaries of their home departments. All events are free and open to the public.
Spring 2025 Events
Thursday, March 27, 2025 - 12PM (ET) via Zoom
Cultivating the affects of place: Teaiwa’s canoe in the Oceanic classroom
Kevin Lujan Lee (Chamoru), Assistant Professor, Indigenous Studies, University at Buffalo and Josh Campbell, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, UCLA
Kevin Lujan Lee (Chamoru) is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University at Buffalo. His current research focuses on (1) the Indigenous politics of decolonization in Oceania; (2) Pacific Islander social movements in the continental United States; and (3) Indigenous Oceanic political thought, in collaboration with Josh Campbell (UCLA). He was previously a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science at the University of British Columbia and holds a PhD in Urban Planning and Politics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Josh Campbell (they/them) is a white (American with familial roots in Ireland) non-binary Ph.D candidate in the Political Science Department at UCLA specializing in political theory and the history of political thought. Their work largely focuses on the interconnections between politics, religion, and populism through the lens of German exile writers around World War II, as well as collaborative projects with Kevin Lujan Lee (University at Buffalo) on Indigenous political theorists in Oceania centered on questions of space, place, Indigeneity, and the cultural and intellectual manifestations of colonialism.
Fall 2024 Events
Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 12PM (ET) via Zoom
Children, Agency, and Imagining Abolition: Chicanx and Black Feminisms Against the Prison Industrial Complex
Andrea Pitts, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo
Placing Chicanx and Black anti-carceral projects in dialogue, this presentation examines children's literature and feminist theory to develop a political conception of youth within prison abolition projects. Such a politicized category considers children and young people as both threatened by forms of social oppression, and, importantly, as potential participants in forms of social mobilization and coalition building.
Andrea J. Pitts is an interdisciplinary researcher and educator whose publications and pedagogy focus on carceral medicine and radical health activism, Latin American and U.S. Latina/x feminisms, prison and police abolition, queer migration studies, critical transgender politics, and disability justice. They are the author of Nos/Otras: Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Multiplicitous Agency, and Resistance (2021), and co-editor of Beyond Bergson: Examining Race and Colonialism through the Writings of Henri Bergson (2019), Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance (2020), and Trans Philosophy (forthcoming 2024). Their current book project Latina/x Abolitionist Feminisms: Incarceration, Agency, and Coalitional Politics examines the philosophical contributions made by U.S Latina/x activists and scholars critiquing state violence, prisons, and policing from the 1960s to the early 2000s.
Thursday, November 14, 2024 - 12PM (ET) via Zoom
The complex dynamics of the engineering gender divide: a focus on women faculty advancement.
Matilde Sánchez-Peña, Assistant Professor, Engineering Education, University at Buffalo
Women faculty play a significant role in the diversification of engineering through their role modeling and mentoring. Therefore, significant resources have been invested in increasing their presence in the field. However, there are limited ways to grasp the impact of such investments as their proposed solutions are located within complex academic systems with many interdependent elements. In this talk, I will discuss results of a project addressing such challenge from a complex system perspective. Using feminist theories to operationalize the practices and processes that reflect a commitment to gender equity and interdisciplinary quantitative approaches, we gauge the actual causal impact of institutional initiatives aiming to increase the presence and persistence of women engineering faculty across the US.
Dr. Matilde Sánchez-Peña is an assistant professor of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo – SUNY where she leads the Diversity Assessment Research in Engineering to Catalyze the Advancement of Respect and Equity (DAREtoCARE) Lab. Her research focuses on developing cultures of care and well-being in engineering education spaces, assessing gains in institutional efforts to advance equity and inclusion, and using data science for training socially responsible engineers.