As part of ATGENDER’s new Online Dialogues on Feminist Conflicts: ATGENDER in Conversation With… series, we are excited to welcome Dr Francesca Sobande.

Francesca has written widely on topics relating to the themes of the series, including digital media studies, Black feminism in Europe, and corporate commodifications of care and community. Most recently, Francesca has worked on music scenes and the questions they raise about gender, race, geography, and solidarity, including how nostalgia can operate in ways which can romanticise “exclusionary past[s] at the expense of […] more inclusive future[s]” (Williams and Sobande, 2025: n.p.). We are especially interested in the insights Francesa has taken from her research into music scenes on what it looks like to productively work with presents and pasts shaped by exclusion, and the possibilities for solidarities in such contexts.

This event is open to all but advanced registration is required. To register for a place, please register here before Friday 13 March, 23:59 CET: https://forms.gle/R1CmURKQpHqC2Vdw6

Title: Gender, Race, Internationalism and Solidarities in and Beyond Hardcore Punk

Monday 16 March 2026, 4pm – 5.30pm CET (Online)

Francesca Sobande (School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, UK)

Abstract: It is more than 40 years since the “Revolution Summer” of 1985 in Washington DC, a time known for a range of impactful efforts to address issues related to inequality and oppression in and beyond hardcore punk spaces. Drawing on research related to hardcore and its offshoots (e.g. post-hardcore and emotional/emotive hardcore – aka (emo)core), this session reflects on dynamics between gender, race, internationalism, and solidarities that are struggled for and sustained through such music. Accounting for elements of the past, present, and future of both music and activism, this session also considers how the rise of social media has shaped ideas about solidarity and associated soundscapes.

Bio:

Dr. Francesca Sobande is a writer and reader in digital media studies at Cardiff University (Wales/Cymru). Her books include The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Consuming Crisis (SAGE, 2022), and Big Brands Are Watching You (University of California Press, 2024). Francesca is also co-author of Look, Don’t Touch: Reflections on the Freedom to Feel (404 Ink, 2025) and Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2022), as well as the free self-published graphic novel, Black Oot Here: Dreams O Us (2023). 

You can read more about Francesca’s recent work, including the free self-published zine, Black Life in / and “Alt” Music Subcultures (2025), here: https://www.francescasobande.com/writing

The discussion will be facilitated by Carys Hill (Department of Sociology, Univeristy of Warwick), board member of ATGENDER.

This event is open to all but advanced registration is required. To register for a place, please register here before Friday 13 March, 23:59 CET: https://forms.gle/R1CmURKQpHqC2Vdw6

If you have any questions about the event, please email: info@atgender.eu.

This event is organised by ATGENDER, the European Association for Gender Research, Education and Documentation. ATGENDER is a membership-funded organisation. To support ATGENDER’s work, please consider joining as an ATGENDER member: https://atgender.eu/membership/register-as-new-member/ 

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