Feminist Geographies

There is considerable enthusiasm and institutional support for feminist-inspired research at UBC. In 1990-91 the university established an interdisciplinary Centre for Research in Women's Studies and Gender Relations and a number of geography faculty have been actively involved in its development. Feminist theory threads through a number of graduate seminars and in most years a specialist seminar is devoted to feminist geography. Current research is as much informed by feminist theory and methods as specifically focused on gender difference and questions of sexuality. This includes disrupting conventional binaries by addressing the personal and intimate in the political and global; a commitment to a materialist reflexivity; the persistent troubling of the power relations embedded within conventions of academic knowledge production; and experimenting with the form and content of academic scholarship, including collaborative and community-based research.

Faculty working on Feminist Geographies

Geraldine Pratt, Professor
Transnational feminism, women and labour

B.Sc. Honours, University of Toronto; M.A., Ph.D. (1984), UBC

"I am completing a 15 year research collaboration with the Philippine Women Centre of BC that has moved from looking at the circumstances of Filipino women working in Canada as domestic workers on temporary work visas, to the issue of family separation and the long term marginalization of families sponsored by domestic workers after they gain permanent resident status in Canada. This feeds into a larger debate about the growing number of temporary work visa and bridging immigration programs. We are experimenting with novel ways of bringing our research to a wider public, most notably through testimonial theatre. Our play, Nanay was performed in Vancouver in February 2009 and at the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin in June 2009. I have been preoccupied with how to put stories of family separation into circulation, with the politics of testimony and witnessing, and the obligations of witnessing beyond national boundaries."

Associate Dean - Faculty, Faculty of Arts July 2010 - June 2011

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~gpratt

Email Contact: gerry.pratt@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5875

Room Number: GEOG 140D

Juanita Sundberg, Associate Professor
Feminist geopolitics, feminism and post-humanism

B.A., Trinity University; M.A., Ph.D. (1999), University of Texas, Austin

"My current project examines the environmental dimensions of United States' border security policies in the US-Mexico borderlands, with a specific focus on protected areas like national wildlife refuges."

Website: juanitasundberg.wordpress.com

Email Contact: juanita.sundberg@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3535

Room Number: GEOG 125

Department of Geography - Faculty of Arts - The University of British Columbia
1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Phone: 604-822-2663 Fax: 604-822-6150
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