Looking back, looking forward

To welcome the new year, GENDER.ED’s new Co-Director, Kaveri Qureshi, and Associate Director Wannes Dupont look back on GENDER.ED's activities in 2025, sharing their excitement for 2026.

For you, what were the most memorable parts of GENDER.ED’s work and programming in 2025?

Kaveri:

So much happened in 2025 so it is really hard to single out just a few activities, but for me, the Annual Research Showcase in May was a really important one. I thought the roundtable discussion on gender, sexualities and the authoritarian turn addressed some of the most challenging developments in our times. Relatedly, I thought our November event on Arab women and the question of the nation was also super important, highlighting how feminists in Jordan and in the Syrian and Palestinian diasporas have navigated the neoliberal bracketing-off of women’s issues from politics and pushed back, insisting on how feminist concerns cannot be separated from political violence. For me this went hand in hand with, and usefully took forward our discussions about Palestinian feminist and queer activist authors at gender and sexuality studies reading group.

Another really memorable activity was the set of Feminist Research Methodologies workshops that Zubin Mistry organised in November. The colleagues who spoke – about using Black feminist auto-ethnographic methods, reconstructing gendered agency in fragmented historical sources, participatory photovoice research, and AI – were so compelling. I learnt so much from the thoughtful and hands-on class activities they had planned – and from the undergraduates, postgraduate taught and even PhD students in the room. It does feel like we injected some very valuable experience of using methods that don’t get much airtime in mainstream research methods teaching, and at a formative time in students’ preparation for their dissertation journeys.

What are you looking forward to in 2026? 

Wannes:

I’m keen to rejoin the GENDER.ED team after a period of research leave. We have plenty of exciting events lined up once again. Among them are quite a few exciting book launches, such as Charlotte Bosseaux’ on A Voice of Their Own: Encouraging Caring and Ethical Practices in Trauma Screen Translation, and the collection of essays about East African Queer and Trans Displacements edited by John Marnell, B Camminga, Barbara Bompani and Kauma Wairuri. I’m also greatly look forwards to Birgit Lang’s guest lecture on Sex, Psyche, and Politics: Eden and Cedar Paul as Activist Translators of European Modernity and to LGBQTQ+ History Month. And, of course, our Annual Research Showcase event will no doubt be as rich and fun as it was last year. Connections are what we’re all about and there will be plenty of opportunities to renew old and make new ones in 2026! 

Kaveri:

Whilst we’re on the subject of book launches, lets not forget your own, Wannes, of your book Unwilling to Know: Male Homosexuality at the Crossroads of Europe, 1870-1965 which is coming out in March! I’m looking forward to that too, as well as to the gender and sexualities reading group, which I do love – the semester plan will be out very soon. Happy new year everyone!