For the last seven years, Ruth and Susan have created and sustained a co-lead research agenda centered on understanding the motivations, actions, meanings and impact of campus based feminist activists. Through actively researching this question, we have surfaced a strong sense that current-day campus activism around ending gender-based violence (GBV) is strong and vibrant, emanating from students, faculty, and administrative staff.
While other scholars have examined the impact of federal policy to reduce GBV (particularly in the US), we continue to pursue equally vital questions of the ways in which various actors within university communities envision and enact change through both sustained, on the ground strategizing and theorizing, inside and outside the classroom. We are particularly interested in the ways that these actors collaborate to foster new ways of thinking about preventing GBV, using expansive visions of culture change as their guiding principle. We have published five articles together addressing these questions, and we have co-edited a special issue of Violence Against Women on international approaches to catalytic transformation of GBV in universities. Each of us teaches full-time; Lewis, in sociology, and Marine, in higher education. Our interdisciplinary teamwork has enabled us to think more deeply across divisions of discipline/field to advance new ideas about feminist activism against violence and its effects. Ruth and Susan have also visited each other’s campuses – Northumbria University and Merrimack College to present their work and engage audiences of faculty, students, and staff in building new visions of a violence-free world. |
Susan Marine and Ruth Lewis
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