Category: Uncategorized
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Feminists fighting sexual violence in the age of Brexit and Trump
This piece is based on a talk delivered as part of the University of Birmingham School of Social Policy seminar series in January 2019 and as the annual lecture of the University of Bristol Gender Research Centre in April 2019. It brings together much of my recent work on feminist activism against sexual violence both…
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Tanya Serisier’s ‘Speaking Out’
These are some remarks written for the launch of Tanya Serisier’s brilliant new book ‘Speaking Out: Feminism, Rape, and Narrative Politics’ (Palgrave 2018). You can buy the book, or order it for your library, here. Tanya Serisier’s book Speaking Out is the first critical study of white feminist politics around rape which explicitly situates this…
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What the ‘grievance studies’ hoax is really about
This is the Open Access (and slightly longer) version of a piece published in Times Higher Education on October 4th 2018. An article entitled ‘Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship’ has recently been published in Areo Magazine. It describes what Helen Pluckrose (editor of Areo), James A. Lindsay (who has a PhD in…
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Sexual harassment and violence in higher education: reckoning, co-option, backlash
This is the text of a keynote (and the inaugural Lincoln Lecture) delivered at the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies conference in Loughborough on June 12th 2018. I am speaking today about sexual harassment and violence. It is difficult to speak about sexual harassment and violence; these are traumatic experiences, and survivors are subject…
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To tackle sexual harassment, we need cultural change
This is the longer version of a piece published in the Guardian on 13th December 2017. We’re talking about sexual harassment in higher education again. We need to talk about sexual harassment – in agricultural and domestic labour, sex work, Hollywood, politics, academia, and every other industry. That we’re talking about it in universities at…
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Juggling the balls, having it all? Tips from a mother and part-time Professor
When I was promoted to Professor in Spring 2017, a number of my female colleagues asked me, ‘how did you do it?’ I have two children, born in 2010 and 2013. I worked three days a week after my first maternity leave, and increased to four days in September 2015 (and remain on a 0.8 contract).…
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‘Reckoning Up’ sexual harassment and violence
This is the transcript of a presentation given as part of a symposium at the 2017 Gender and Education conference (University of Middlesex, June 21-23), focused on the Universities Supporting Victims of Sexual Violence project. The other papers in the symposium were given by Vanita Sundaram, Anne Chappell and Charlotte Jones. I want to start…
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On ‘Impact’
I really hate the word ‘impact’. It makes me think of things which are hard and aggressive: a meteorite colliding with the earth; a fist connecting with a face. It brings to mind the forcible contact of one object with another. In research terms, this is the way ‘impact’ is often done. We imagine it…
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Arguing from qualitative data
One of the main queries I get from research students is about how to develop an argument using qualitative data. When you’re sitting with a stack of narratives, how do you shape them into something interesting and important? How do you construct a clear story without losing complexity, and while letting people speak for themselves…
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The feminist classroom as ‘safe space’ after Brexit and Trump
So it’s happened. Donald Trump is President-elect of the United States. He ran on a white supremacist ticket, and multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault failed to stop him taking the White House. There were reports of racist, homophobic and misogynistic hate crimes within hours of the result being declared. David Duke called the…
Alison Phipps 