15th Anniversary of the Amsterdam Research Centre of Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS) (Web)

Time: 13.03.2026
Venue: Amsterdam
Proposals by: 15.08.2025

Some fifteen years ago, a group of (young) academics decided to build a center for research on gender and sexuality where a variety of academic approaches would meet: anthropologists, geographers, political scientists, sociologists working on matters of gender and/or sexuality. They laboured together at a university in a modestly-sized capital city in a former colonial-center, a country that continues to disproportionately reap the capitalist benefits of that past and is situated in what we today call the ‘global north’. They did not have a lot of power or influence, nor institutional backing, but they creatively built something simply by insisting on the right to exist. They were relentless, as were those who came after them. The center exists to this day, facilitating research on gender and sexuality. That deserves to be commemorated. So, we came together to make a plan. We also recognised that the center exists imperfectly, and that warrants critical adjustments.
We started off rather predictably by imagining a conference – a conference to discuss, debate and think about the (im)possibilities of feminist solidarities in a world that is not yet equitable. We were immediately confronted by the inequalities of that world. Could the feminists we hoped would come to celebrate and critique the center through their interventions get visas? How much time, effort and money would they have to expend just to try? The centre would benefit greatly from their work, but would they gain something from it too? Would we really say anything new? Necessity is the mother of invention! So we tried to think of something new. We thought: “Why not offer a prize to celebrate our shared roots, enduring entanglements and germinating hopes instead?” Read more … (Web)

Organising Committee: Zethu Matebeni (South Africa), Julie McBrien and Rachel Spronk (the Netherlands), and Mohira Suyarkulova (Kyrgyzstan)

Source: GenderCampus