We are welcoming scholars, students, activists and artists across wide fields of feminist and gender research and praxis to join us for the international Gender Studies conference 2022 – Feminist Matterings: Indigenous and Arctic Engagements. The conference will host 26 workshops that cover the themes of the conference in inter/transdisciplinary manner and from various perspectives. 

The conference seeks to produce new feminist and Indigenous thought to reimagine future solidarities and ways of knowing. The conference calls to explore how rich transdisciplinary collaboration can help feminist research matter in the effort to build more sustainable, intelligent and humane world(s) in the Arctic and beyond. In addition to alluding to the ethico-political significance of feminist research, the keyword matterings in the conference title also refers to new materialist inspirations and the material aspects of knowledge production. In the spirit of Science and Technology Studies (STS), we wish to investigate the material aspects of epistemic practices and the complex relationship between knowledge and power.

The conference also welcomes scholars who are interested in developing different ways of decolonizing feminist knowledge, including, indigenous STS studies, antiracist knowledge production, arts activism(s), ethics of knowledge, and queering knowledge and research methodologies. The location of the conference at the University of Oulu, in northern Finland, also provides a unique opportunity to approach these themes from the perspective of Arctic research.

Call for papers to be presented in the conference workshops is now open! 

The keynote speakers at the conference are:

  • Professor Suvi Keskinen, The Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki.
  • Professor Dorte Marie Søndergaard, Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, Denmark.
  • Professor Kim TallBear, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, Canada.

See the preliminary conference program here.

Instruction for submissions: 

Abstracts should be targeted to workshops listed on the conference website.

Abstracts are submitted directly to the contact person email specified in the workshop description. 

The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2022. 

Abstracts falling outside the proposed workshops should be submitted via this online form.

Abstracts should be 200–300 words and submitted (.doc/.docx/.rtf) with the presentation title and the names, affiliations and emails of all authors. The language and format of the presentation (online/face-to-face) should be clearly indicated in the abstract and correspond to the instructions given in the workshop description. Accepted abstracts will be published in the conference book of abstracts. 

The Gender Studies 2022 conference is organized and hosted by the Gender Studies at the University of Oulu. It is organized in collaboration with the Association for Gender Studies in Finland (SUNS) and the Giellagas Institute, which focuses on research on the Sámi language and culture at the University of Oulu. Please follow our social media to find out about the latest information: Twitter (@GenderOulu), Facebook and Instagram (@GenderStudiesOulu). For more information please contact: genderstudiesconference2022@oulu.fi.