Scholars are invited to submit abstracts for a ’50 Years of Feminism at Kent’ conference taking place at Kent on 27-28 June 2015.

The conference, one of a number of projects marking the University of Kent’s 50th anniversary, is entitled Austerity, Gender and Household Finances, and will explore four thematic streams:

• Austerity and Housing (organised by Kent Professor Helen Carr)
• Austerity and Debt and Credit (organised by Dr Julia Gumy from Bristol and Dr Simone Wong from Kent)
• Austerity and Parenting (organised by Dr Ruth Cain from Kent)
• Austerity and Financialisation: What can we learn from the Global South? (organised by Kent Law School Teaching Assistant Serena Natile).

Full details of each thematic stream are available in the official Call For Papers document.

Serena Natile said:

‘Many European countries and across the world are currently facing a time of financial crisis. This has supposedly brought with it a need for austerity in order to ride out the crisis. We have thus seen a reduction in public spending which in turn has led to a tightening of fiscal policies and an immediate impact upon the provision of welfare benefits and public service provision. 

‘The financial crisis has also led to other concerns such as unemployment, stagnation of incomes, access to credit, indebtedness, homelessness, etc. In such times of austerity, it is often the vulnerable in society, and particularly women, who bear the brunt of spending cuts. We aim to initiate a critical interdisciplinary dialogue to explore and interrogate the impact of austerity on households as well as the scope and effect of existing public policies and legal and regulatory measures on families and their financial circumstances.’

Submissions to the conference are invited from a broad range of disciplines including law, sociology, social policy, economics, psychology and gender studies. Abstracts of 200-300 words should be submitted via email to kentausterityconference@kent.ac.uk by 15 October 2014.

Additional speakers at the event will include: Professor Mary Evans (London School of Economics); Professor Suzanne Soederberg (Queen’s, Canada); and Professor Rebecca Tunstall (York).

The conference has been organised as part of the Radical Women: 50 years of Feminism at Kent project which is celebrating past achievements at Kent, including the establishment of the first taught programme in Women’s Studies in this country.

The project will also feature a public lecture in the Open Lecture series to be given by a leading figure in feminist activism and a series of feminist films to be shown and discussed at the Gulbenkian Cinema on the Canterbury campus.

Email: a.p.shieber@kent.ac.uk