CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST LIBERATION STRUGGLES: BODIES, BORDERS, AND INTERSECTIONS. 

12th EUROPEAN FEMINIST RESEARCH CONFERENCE 

– ATGENDER 2025 – 

9-12 JULY – BARCELONA (CATALONIA, SPAIN) 

 Thank you to all the 543 participants who joined us at the conference, whose contributions gave life to 111 panels and 17 workshops! Below you can view the call for papers and the keynotes of the conference.

Introduction:  

In an era marked by heightened oppressions, including ongoing genocides, (neo-)colonialism and imperialism, violent conflicts, and intersecting injustice and socio-political turbulence, the 12th European Feminist Research Conference invites scholars, activists, and practitioners to engage in critical dialogues around the theme “Contemporary Feminist Liberation Struggles: bodies, borders, and intersections”. Building upon the rich tradition of feminist inquiry and activism, this conference seeks to explore how feminist thought and praxis continue to disrupt and challenge prevailing power structures in the face of persistent injustices, aggressions, and authoritarian power grabs.  

The conference theme is rooted in the pressing need to address the multifaceted dimensions of contemporary oppressions and struggles for liberation, fostering interdisciplinary conversations and collaborations across a broad range of research topics. By foregrounding bodies, borders, and intersections, as well as the voices and experiences of those most affected by repression, the conference aims to delve into the intricate ways in which individuals and communities navigate, resist and chart pathways to confront systems of harm, violence and injustice. Exploring the transformative potential of feminist liberation that centers intersectional, queer, non-adultocentric and anti/decolonial feminisms, participants will interrogate the interlocking systems of power that shape experiences of violence, displacement, and resistance. 

The conference has 10 thematic strands, each shedding light on critical aspects of contemporary struggles for liberation. 

Conference thematic tracks or strands: 

STRAND 1. Gender, Climate Change and Environment 

STRAND 2. Desiring sub/versions: sexualities, gender identities and belongings 

STRAND 3. “Mundo zurdo”: decolonial struggles, subversive affects and feminist disorders 

STRAND 4. Epistemologies and methodologies (of) in between.  

STRAND 5. Institutional violence, transformation, and justice: contemporary harms and intersectional struggles for justice within and beyond institutions 

STRAND 6. Intergenerational Feminists Perspectives  

STRAND 7. (Un)mattering of worlds: feminist and other critical perspectives on science and technology 

STRAND 8. Feminist Subversions for Peace: Rights, Cultures, and Communities 

STRAND 9. Geopolitical, Socio-Cultural, and Personal Borders 

STRAND 10.  Rebuilding Communities: Transformative justice in conflict- and violence-affected contexts 

Keynote Presentations: 

Gražina Bielousova, “Epistemic (W)holes: Doing Feminism with(out) Europe’s East”

Dr. Gražina Bielousova (Duke University, 2022)  is an anthropologist of religion and politics working at the intersection of race, religion, and gender in east Europe. Her current project and forthcoming book (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026) focus on leftist feminists in east European countries that find themselves under the threat of Russia’s military expansionist politics, with particular attention to Ukraine. Gražina’s other academic interests include de- and post- colonial theory, global raciality, and socioeconomic inequality. She is currently a researcher at Vilnius University and a lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania).

Layal Ftouni & Anna Younes, “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle”

Layal Ftouni is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She is currently working on a book project on the ‘reproduction of life’ in conditions of proximity to death and debilitation, both human and environmental, in the settler colonial context of Palestine. In 2021, she received the Dutch Research Council VENI grant to support this project. Before joining Utrecht University, she lectured at SOAS, University of London, and earned her PhD from the University of Westminster. Her writing is featured in a variety of publications, the most recent of which is: “They make death, and I am the labor of Life”: Palestinian Prisoners Sperm Smuggling as an Affirmation of Life” published in Critical Times (2024). She is the co-editor of Arab Subcultures (2017) published by Bloomsbury Press and is on the Editorial Board of Lateral, a peer-review open-access journal of the Cultural Studies Association. As well as her educational and research work, Layal is also a founding member of Dutch Scholars for Palestine, a network of educational workers across Dutch Universities committed to the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination.

Anna Younes is a German Palestinian scholar that has also curated the first transnational and transdisciplinary month-long Palestinian arts festival in Germany in 2016. Her focus rests on what she has coined the “War on Antisemitism” in her 2015 PhD dissertation, which dealt with Germany’s stance toward “fighting Antisemitism”. Since then she has developed her concept further and places it within trajectories of counterinsurgency wars in a new post-WWII world order, framed by tactics used in the War on Drugs and most prominently the War on Terror. Younes thinks transnationally and transhistorically. Currently, she researches the afterlives of settler colonialism in the Dutch Caribbean and works with the ELSC – the European Legal Support Center defending pro-Palestinian activists and scholars in Europe. Her work zooms in on settler colonial theories, psychoanalysis and race critical theories and can be found on academia.edu or her personalised website: www.annaestheryounes.net.

Hourya Bentouhami, “Authoritarianism and Islamophobia”

Hourya Bentouhami is Professor of social and political philosophy at the University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès (France). Taking both a conceptual and empirical approach, her work focuses on feminist politics critical of violence and injustice, which she approaches from a global, intersectional perspective, taking into account the history and memory of transatlantic slavery, (neo)colonial processes in Africa and (post)colonial Mediterranean migration.