Georgetown University Gender+ Justice Initiative

Feminist Mixer 🗣️📢

📅 Wednesday, April 9, 2025
⏰ 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM ET
📍 In-Person Event | CarBarn Patio, 3520 Prospect St. NW, Washington, DC 20007, Georgetown University Main Campus.
➡️ Open to Main Campus & Medical Center Faculty and Staff
Medical/Graduate Students.
📌 Register Now: Link in Bio

Join the Georgetown Gender+ Justice Initiative, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, and Georgetown Women’s Alliance for a Feminist Mixer! Connect with fellow feminist faculty, medical students, graduate students, and staff from all fields and across Main Campus and the Medical Center! Introductions at 5:00pm. This gathering will provide a perfect opportunity to forge new connections and discover the rich diversity of expertise across our university community.

Light refreshments will be provided.
We can’t wait to see you there!

For accommodation requests, please email us at [email protected]

Arundhati Roy is an Indian author and political activist who is best known for the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her advocacy of environmental and human rights issues. Her political writings criticize fascism, social injustice, and globalization, among other issues.

Event Recap 🤍✨

On Feb 19th, we hosted our Georgetown community for an intimate and moving evening with the screening of Bye Bye Tiberias, followed by a discussion and Q&A with director Lina Soualem.

The powerful documentary traces the journey of Soualem’s mother, acclaimed actress Hiam Abbass, who left her Palestinian village in pursuit of her dreams leaving behind generations of resilient women.
Blending family footage, historical archives, and present-day scenes from Palestine, the film unveils a deeply personal yet universal story of exile, memory, and enduring bonds.

We cannot wait to continue such impactful and moving conversations with revolutionary women like Lina Soualem.

Thank you for joining us!

🚨Fellowship Alert🚨

Apply for the 2025 Gender+ Justice Fellowship!

The Gender+ Justice Initiative is excited to announce fellowship opportunities for Georgetown University faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students across campuses.

These fellowships support interdisciplinary research on gender, racial, and economic justice, with a focus on anti-racist work and intersectional feminism. Fellows receive a $1500 stipend, participate in workshops and engage in a vibrant intellectual community.

✨Eligibility: Open to Georgetown faculty (TL, NTL, Postdoc and Adjuncts), undergraduate, and graduate students in various disciplines, including social sciences, STEM, medicine, law, humanities, arts, education, business, public policy, and foreign service. We encourage applications from marginalized communities, including people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals.

✨Deadline: Apply by May 2nd, 2025

Jenn Burleton is the founder and executive director of TransActive Education & Advocacy. She leads a team that provides services focused on the needs of transgender and gender non-conforming children and youth.

Nawal El Saadawi (1931-2021) was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician. She authored and left behind critical books focused on women in Islam. She is described as “the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World”, and as “Egypt’s most radical woman.”

Meet G+JI Fellow, Raikhan Primbetova, a Sophomore in the SFS, majoring in International Economics.

Titled “Women’s Fate in “ALZHIR”: A Concentration Camp with Injustice, Violence, and Hard Labor,” Primbetova’s research is focused on the Stalin’s Period, when the USSR’s Gulag concentration camps imprisoned approximately 20 million people in a fifteen year time span. One of such camps, ALZHIR, was a female-only camp for women related to the traitors to the Soviet Union, including wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters of male political prisoners. Their identity as female family members was enough to be sent to a concentration camp, where they experienced everyday hard labor, physical abuse, and psychological pressure. Primbetova’s project aims to raise this social problem and restore the silenced and censored topic of the last century.

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Film Screening: Connection | Isolation

🗓️Wednesday, Apr 2, 2025 
⏰6:00 PM – 8:30 PM 
📍Healey Family Student Center, Film Screening Room

Join us for a screening of Connection | Isolation, an intimate hybrid documentary directed by G. Chesler. The film presents eight portraits of trans and post-gender individuals navigating the complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic—grappling with isolation, deepening their awareness of gender and identity, and confronting systemic injustices. Through personal narratives, reenactments, and archival footage, Connection | Isolationsheds light on the intersecting experiences of trans communities, Asian Americans facing rising racism, Black Americans resisting state violence, and disabled individuals excluded from a society that refuses basic protections.

Featuring an all trans and q***r crew, the film highlights resilience, community-building, and care as acts of resistance. Following the screening, G. Chesler and cast members will discuss the filmmaking process, trans and disabled storytelling, and the power of connection in times of crisis. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage in a thought-provoking conversation on identity, activism, and healing.

Hosted by  Georgetown’s Gender+ Justice Initiative and Georgetown-Howard Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice; Co-sponsored by Georgetown’s Communication, Culture & Technology Program , Disability Cultural Center , Women’s and Gender Studies Program,  Culture and Politics and Film and Media Studies Program.

Mask wearing is encouraged. This event is wheelchair accessible. Please contact [email protected] for accessibility requests.

🔗RSVP via link in bio.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Porou, Māori) is a scholar of education and critic of persistent colonialism in academic teaching and research. Her groundbreaking book Decolonising Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples (1998) remains an international best seller, translated into Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Italian, and Bhasa Indonesian. Smith traced the history of scientific knowledge as it developed through racist practices and the exploitation of indigenous peoples, and asserted a challenging vision for how research and education can be used to confront colonialism and oppression. Re-released in 2012, her book launched a wave of indigenous-led critiques of academic power and proposals for indigenized methodological interventions.

Meet G+JI fellow, Aned Ladino, a PhD candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, specializing in Latin American Literature and Culture.

Titled “Afro-Colombian Feminism: Exploring Resistance Through Oral and Musical Traditions,” Ladino’s research examines the resistance of Black women in Colombia through the oral and musical tradition of bullerengue, a folkloric rhythm originating in maroon communities that foregrounds women’s voices and performances.

In addition to analyzing how Afro-Colombian oral and musical traditions subvert dominant forms of knowledge by privileging the voices of female cantadoras, Ladino also argues that the bullerengue rhythm and its collaborative practices enable self-representation, allowing women to articulate past experiences and traumas in ways that transcend to the present, creating a lexicon for learning, healing, and generating new epistemologies.

Swipe 👉🏽 to read more.

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Systemic Pollution in the Antilles: When the Law Puts Social Justice to the Test

🗓️ Monday, March 31, 2025 
⏰ 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM  EDT 
📍Intercultural Center, Room 241 (Center for Contemporary Arabic Studies)

Join Jessica Oublié, author of Toxic Tropics, for a lecture on the intersection of gender, health, and environmental justice in Guadeloupe and Martinique. The discussion aims to examine the long-term impact of the Chlordécone crisis—a toxic pesticide used in the Caribbean for decades—on public health and the environment.

Oublié will explore how gender shapes medical treatment, reproductive health, and social dynamics, as well as the pivotal role of women in food practices, activism, and policy responses such as the Chlordécone Plan. Through this discussion, she highlights the urgent need for both ecological and gender justice in the region.

Hosted by Georgetown University’s Gender+ Justice Initiative, Earth Commons, Global Health Institute, French and Francophone Studies Department, Women’s and Gender Studies and Culture and Politics

🔗RSVP via the QR code on the flyer or the link in our bio. Free and open to all. 

Accommodations requests should be made to [email protected]

Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, archivist and curator. Her work focuses on ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial complex, transformative justice and supporting youth leadership development.

Kaba’s work is foundational to bringing justice to our society and her words are powerfully moving. Considering the injustices taking place at this moment, allow Kaba’s words to inspire you to continue advocating for change, “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.”

Meet G+JI Sreya Patri, an undergraduate studying Culture & Politics in the .

Titled “Renvironmentaljustice, , , , to expand the academic understanding of hegemonic masculinities and femininities by focusing on gender constructions in Indigenous Arctic communities–groups whose socializations have been studied only finitely. Additionally, knowledge in the field of environmental justice is limited to the effects of climate change on governments and non-Indigenous individuals. This project endeavors to widen the scope of analysis of the impact of climate change on individual’s security, employment, and health by highlighting Indigenous peoples’ stories. Patri’s research project ultimately aims to answer the question: to what extent are certain Indigenous gender roles threatened by and shaped by the challenges of melting ice & warming Arctic temperatures, governmental fracking activities, and the increasing jurisdiction of the Canadian and American governments over Indigenous Arctic territories?

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Reimagining Perinatal Care to Promote Health Equity

🗓️Thursday, March 20, 2025
⏰ 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM
📍Hybrid Event: Hybrid Event: Fisher Colloquium, 4th floor, Hariri Building, Georgetown University Main Campus and/or via Zoom

Join us for a panel discussion centering on reimagining the design and delivery of perinatal care to advance health equity and improve perinatal outcomes for all birthing people. 

This panel discussion features thought leaders, public health advocates, and reproductive health equity researchers with expertise in reproductive justice, health policy, Black perinatal health, and community-based participatory research, moderated by Georgetown University School of Nursing faculty members.

Hosted by Gender+ Justice Initiative , Georgetown University School of Nursing, Georgetown-Howard Universities Center for Clinical and Translational Science, O’Neill Institute, Center for Health Equity, and Women’s and Gender Studies

🔗RSVP via the QR code on the flyer or the link in our bio. Secure your spot now!

Aura Cumes is a Maya Kaqchikel Indigenous woman from Guatemala. A change maker, researcher, and activist who teaches us the manners in which systems of colonization and patriarchy work together to marginalize and exploit Indigenous people, “Colonialism and patriarchy are not separate systems. They are intertwined in how they dominate, exploit, and marginalize Indigenous peoples, particularly Indigenous women. To decolonize is to also dismantle patriarchy and all forms of violence against our bodies and lands.”

Meet G+JI fellow, Alyssa Newman, PhD.

Dr. Newman is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. Of Sociology and Kennedy Institute of Ethics.

About her research: 
Although a significant demand for Black s***m donors exists, Black donors make up only 4% of the total donor population in s***m banks across the United States (Moreta, Simpson, Ghide, and Wiltshire 2022). In contrast, 70% of the donor population of these s***m banks are white. Dr. Newman’s study seeks to understand the contours of this disparity from two vantage points: factors preventing or facilitating the participation of Black men as s***m donors, as well as the impact of the Black s***m donor shortage on intended recipients. While media coverage highlighting the consequences of the underrepresentation of Black s***m donors, this research systematically explores the experiences of recipients seeking Black donor s***m, largely Black q***r women and single women.

Swipe 👉🏽 to read more.

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Faith, Feminism, and Being Unfinished III: Love Wins 💜☮️

🗓️Tuesday, March 11, 2025
⏰4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
📍Hybrid Event: Maria & Alberto De La Cruz Art Gallery, Georgetown University Main Campus and/or via Zoom

Join us for the third installment of the “Faith, Feminism, and Being Unfinished” series, inspired by the writings of theologian Anne E. Patrick, SNJM (1941–2016), whose work continues to influence contemporary conversations on faith, conscience, and gender.

The event will feature musical performances by artist Michaela Harrison (SFS ’92), followed by a conversation led by Katie Lacz and Kate McElwee from the Women’s Ordination Conference. The discussion will be inspired by the 2009 Madeleva Lecture by Anne E. Patrick, SNJM (1941–2016), on Women, Conscience, and the Creative Process, which explores the intersection of women’s lived experiences, creativity, and spiritual reflection.

Hosted by Gender+ Justice Initiative , Mission & Ministry, Office of Scholarly Publications, Women’s Center, 5 Theses, Women’s Ordination Conference and Patrick Family

🔗RSVP via the QR code on the flyer or the link in our bio. Secure your spot now!

🚨G+JI Opportunity Alert 🚨

The Georgetown University Gender+ Justice Initiative is thrilled to announce its signature event, the Annual Research Colloquium, now in its seventh edition! This fall, October 3, 2025, we invite faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from across Georgetown and from neighboring universities to share their work and discuss opportunities for interdisciplinary conversations on intersectional issues of gender, racial, and economic justice and beyond.

📝Call for proposal: We welcome proposals from faculty and graduate students across Georgetown campuses as well as faculty from neighboring universities located in the DC / Maryland / Virginia region. We encourage proposals from diverse fields, perspectives, and stages of development, from initial concepts to completed papers. Panels will feature 8-10 minute presentations followed by a discussion. We especially encourage applications from marginalized communities, including people of color, women, disabled individuals, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Proposals that focus on gender and adopt an intersectional approach are particularly welcome in areas including, but not limited to:

Climate Justice; Indigenous Rights and Sovereignty; Labor Justice and Workers’ Rights; Gender-Based Violence and Prevention; Health Equity and Access; Disability Justice; Migration; Educational Equity; Digital Rights and Online Safety; Economic Inequality and Poverty; Reproductive Justice; Housing; Environmental Justice; LGBTQ+ Rights and Advocacy; Criminal Justice Reform; Mental Health and Wellness; Political Representation and Democracy; Care Work, and many others.

🗓️Deadline to submit abstract: May 30, 2025
Do not hesitate to reach us with any questions you may have.