October 22nd marked the launch of the Gender, Deviance and Society (GDS) research group at the University of Greenwich and we marked the event with an online webinar.
Drawing together the research expertise of its leaders – Dr Stacy Banwell, Dr Alexandra Fanghanel, Dr Camille Stengel and Dr Giulia Zampini – GDS aims to push forward research innovation in gender-related matters through interdisciplinary approaches, horizontal leadership, and mentoring. We want to create a platform for all members of the group at all stages of their scholarship and research to come together and learn from each other.
The GDS launch focused on celebrating the publication of Dr Banwell’s monograph Gender and the Violence(s) of War and Armed Conflict: More Dangerous to be a Woman? The book is now out as an open access publication on Emerald Publishing. An animation of Dr Banwell’s book can be viewed here.
For this occasion, we were excited to be able to read one of our members’ work in full (academics struggle to find time to read these days, or at least to read slowly). We always support each other’s achievements, but we seldom have time to really dig deep into each other’s work and ideas, so reading Dr Banwell’s work was a privilege. And beyond that, witnessing her ideas come to life in the discussion and be delivered with enthusiasm and intellectual prowess was very exciting.
Venturing into the world of webinars for the first time posed some technical challenges, which we met with laughter and jokes (and some frantic emails and Team and WhatsApp messaging back and forth, which webinar chair Dr Stengel managed with an exemplary poker face).
Overall, we succeeded in keeping our audience during the 45 minutes question and answer-style webinar, where Dr Fanghanel and Dr Zampini “grilled” Dr Banwell with questions about her book. This was smoothly followed by some thought-provoking questions from the audience.
It was great to see a heterogeneous audience made up of students as well as scholars from other disciplines. This reflects the aims and objectives of the group to bring together scholars from different disciplines through affiliate membership and collaborations, as well as enabling research opportunities for young scholars.
GDS is planning an event in the spring of 2021 to discuss the soon-to-be published SAGE textbook Sex and Crime.
To join the group, or find out more, contact A.n.d.fanghanel@gre.ac.uk