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Meet the Esteemed Women Studies Conference Speakers
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Nyla Ali Khan
Oklahoma City Community College
Dr. Nyla Ali Khan teaches at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC). She has also taught as a Visiting Professor at the University of Oklahoma. Formerly, she was a professor at the University of Nebraska-Kearney. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature and her Masters in Postcolonial Literature and Theory at the University of Oklahoma.
Dr. Khan is on the Oklahoma Governor’s International Team. She is also a member of the Harvard-based Scholars Strategy Network . She has served on the board of Generation Citizen, a nonprofit organization seeking to empower the younger generation through civics education. She is an active member of the multicultural, multinational and multireligious Women’s Interfaith Alliance. In May 2015, Khan was the first Kashmiri woman to be nominated to the advisory council of the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women. The Council serves “as a resource and clearinghouse for research and information on issues related to women and gender bias, to act as an advisory entity on equity issues to state agencies, communities, organizations and businesses of the state, and to establish recommendations for action to improve the quality of life for Oklahoma women, children and families.” In March 2019, Khan was appointed Commissioner of the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Woman by the Senator Pro Tempore of the Oklahoma Senate.
Dr. Khan was honored by the Journal Record as one of the fifty women making a difference in Oklahoma in 2019 and 2020. She was also recognized at the OK State Capitol for her human rights work in 2018 and honored by the Oklahoma League of Women Voters as one of the 100 Trailblazers for 2018. She was recently awarded the President’s Volunteer Service Award & Silver Medal for her national public speaking and her bridge building work at the community and grassroots level in the state of Oklahoma.
Author of several published articles, book reviews and editorials, she has edited Parchment of Kashmir, a collection of essays on Jammu and Kashmir, written five books, including Educational Strategies for Youth Empowerment in Conflict Zones: Transforming, Nit Transmitting, Trauma, The Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism, and Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir: Between Indian and Pakistan. Several of her articles have appeared in academic journals, newspapers and magazines in the United States and South Asia.. She has reading competence in Arabic and Hindi and is fluent in Urdu and Kashmiri.
Dr. Khan has presented lectures on various subjects at several universities including American University, Columbia University and New York University. She is an Oklahoma Humanities Scholar presenting public talks statewide, including women’s correctional facilities, where she focuses on education and women’s empowerment. She has also been interviewed by numerous major media outlets including NPR and Voice of America.
As an educator, her goal is to engage in reflective action working with diverse cultural and social groups questioning the exclusivity of cultural nationalism, the erosion of cultural syncretism, the ever-increasing dominance of religious fundamentalism, and the irrational resistance to cultural and linguistic differences. Her unflinching commitment to pedagogy, scholarship, and her unrelenting faith in the critical focus that education can provide, motivate her to build bridges across racial, political, and ideological divides.
Plenary Speaker
Dr. Tobe Levin von Gleichen
Associate, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research Harvard University, USA
A multi-lingual scholar and activist, Tobe Levin von Gleichen earned a PhD. in comparative literature from Cornell University and MA’s from NYU in Paris and the Université de la Sorbonne nouvelle – Paris III. A Professor emerita of the University of Maryland Global Campus (formerly UMUC), she has been an Associate of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research under the directorship of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at Harvard from 2006 to the present, a visiting professor at King’s College University of London (2018-2020), and a visiting research fellow at the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center at Mt. Holyoke College (2004), at Brandeis University (2006) and Cornell University (2010). Visiting Research Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford welcomed her as a visiting research fellow in 2014-2016; she continued as an Associate of the Gender Studies Centre until 2019.
Along with more than 100 academic and popular articles, Tobe Levin has brought out three edited volumes: Violence. ‘Mercurial Gestalt’ (Rodopi, 2008); Empathy and Rage. Female Genital Mutilation in African Literature. (co-edited with University of Ghana professor Augustine H. Asaah. Ayebia, 2009); and Waging Empathy. Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and the Global Movement to Ban FGM (UnCUT/VOICES Press, 2014). Finally, with Maria Kiminta, she co-authored Kiminta. A Maasai’s Fight against Female Genital Mutilation (UnCUT/VOICES Press, 2015).
Credited with being among the first in Germany to act against FGM, she founded a registered charity in 1998, FORWARD – Germany (currently FORWARD for Women). Tobe Levin von Gleichen has been recognized by the Ingrid Gräfin zu Solms Human Rights Award (25 November 2002); by a Certificat de Reconnaissance (Certificate of Gratitude) for Services Rendered to the Republic of Mali at the Embassy of Mali in Berlin, 22 September 2010; by the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press ‘Women and Media Award’ in Washington, DC. 6 April 2014; and by the Global Woman P.E.A.C.E, Foundation Award for anti-FGM Advocacy in Literature on 21 October 2017.
Plenary Speaker
Prof. Indrani Margolin
Professor in Social Work
The Graduate Faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies
University of Northern British Columbia
Canada
Dr. Indrani Margolin is a Professor in Social Work, part of the graduate faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies, and a graduate supervisor in Health Sciences at the University of Northern British Columbia. She holds a PhD in Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning with a specialization in Holistic & Aesthetic Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies of Education at the University of Toronto. Her research and teaching interests include spirituality; ancient meditations and visualizations; post-traumatic growth, girls’ and women’s well-being, mentorship, and arts-based research & practice methods. Dr. Indrani is part of the Northern FIRE (Feminist Institute for Research & Evaluation) leadership team at UNBC and is also Co-Chair for the 12th International Conference on Spirituality & Social Work, June 12-15, 2025, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is an initiate in Mahavakyam Meditation from a long lineage of Himalayan masters and trained in the Tulshi Sen Consulting Train the Trainer system.
Plenary Speaker
Prof. Karen Carpenter
Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Psychology
University of the West Indies, Mona
Jamaica
Professor Karen Carpenter is Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Psychology. She is a Florida board certified clinical sexologist and a licensed counselling psychologist in Jamaica. She has been working in private relationship & sex therapy for the more than 20 years.
She is the Director for the Caribbean Sexuality Research Group (CSRG) Sexology Clinic, at the University Hospital of the West Indies and has lectured in psychology, research methods, gender & sexuality for more than 30 years. She hosts Love & Sex on facebook and is a guest expert on issues of gender and human sexuality and interpersonal relationships.
Professor Carpenter has worked with public, and private sector organisations in designing and conducting training & research. She is the author of Love & Sex: the Basics, Questioning Caribbean Jewish Identity, and editor of Interweaving Tapestries of Sexuality & Culture Vol 1 & 2, as well as co-author of Language Race & the Global Jamaican.
Plenary Speaker
Dr. Neziswa Titi
University of Cape Town
South Africa
Dr Neziswa Titi, Ph.D (DPsy) is a transdisciplinary scholar-activist in the human, social, and health sciences. Her research praxis is contextualised by a decolonial, Africa-centred, child-centric and feminist outlook. Her work focuses on African psychologies, child sexual violence and trauma, children’s rights, the intersections of violence against women and children, access to services and the development of mental health interventions. Her advocacy includes access to higher education and accentuating young people’s voices i.e. youth-led parliamentary advocacy on the RSA Children’s Amendment Bill (B18-2020). She is an experienced academic, professional, and civil society organisation leader nationally and internationally with service on the South African National Child Rights Coalition Steering Committee (2020-2022), Psychological Association of South Africa Division of Research and Methodologies (2019-2021), International and Child Rights Partnership Conceptual Interconnections Working Group (2021-2022), University of Cape Town Student Discipline Tribunal of Appeal (2024-06/2028), and the boards of the Western Cape Ministry of Health and Wellness at Lentegeur Psychiatric Hospital (2023 – current) and Childline Western Cape (2021-current). In 2021 Mail and Guardian recognised Dr Titi among the most influential 200 Young South Africans and she provides consultancy to international and national NGOs on decolonial feminist approaches and transformative organisational cultures.
Plenary Speaker
Dr. Fiona MacDonald
Associate Professor
Co-Chair, International Studies Graduate Program
University of Northern British Columbia
Canada
Dr. Fiona MacDonald (PhD UBC) is an Associate Professor specializing in Gender Politics. Dr. MacDonald co-edited the Finding Feminisms special issue of the Canadian Journal of Political Science (June 2017) which includes her article, “Knocking Down Walls in Political Science: In Defense of an Expansionist Feminist Agenda.” Her other publications can be found in the journals Hypatia, Citizenship Studies, Constellations, and Canadian Public Administration. Her article “Indigenous Peoples and Neoliberal ‘Privatization’ in Canada: Opportunities, Cautions and Constraints” won the 2012 John McMenemy Prize for the best article published in volume 44 of the Canadian Journal of Political Science. Her co-edited book, Turbulent Times, Transformational Opportunities? Gender and Politics Today and Tomorrow, was published with University of Toronto Press, Spring 2020. She is currently working on research related to the impact(s) of apology following medical error or mistreatment and a co-edited book titled, Feministing in Political Science: A Manifesta for Change.
Plenary Speaker
Dr. Mariame Racine Sow
Managing Director of FORWARD for Women
Germany
Dr. Mariame Racine Sow studied sociology and earned her doctorate in education at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Mariame Racine Sow moved to Germany from Senegal in 1989 and has been campaigning for women’s rights for decades. She is the Managing Director of the non-governmental organisation, FORWARD for Women. It wants to end female genital mutilation and offers advice to affected migrants. As a diaspora activist, she also supports women’s health projects in Senegal. Since 2011, she has been active in educational work, training women and men from 16 African organizations and associations on topics such as gender roles and parenting patterns. Among other things, they discuss the African understanding of parent–child roles, the role and mission of schools, and the responsibilities of the youth welfare office. In addition, she works as a social counselor at the ASB refugee shelter.
Workshop Speaker
Dr. Ni Luh Nyoman Seri Malini
Faculty of Humanities
Udayana University
Indonesia
Dr. Ni Luh Nyoman Seri Malini is a distinguished faculty member at the Faculty of Humanities, Udayana University, where she teaches in the English Literature Department. She holds a Doctorate in Linguistics (2011), a Master’s in Linguistics (2004), and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature (1993), all from Udayana University. With over two decades of experience in language education and assessment, Dr. Malini has completed several advanced training programs from prestigious institutions such as the University of Oregon, The University of Queensland, and the American English Institute. Her expertise spans language teaching methodology, assessment, and research methodology. In addition to her academic contributions, she serves as Coordinator of the External Quality Assurance Center at Udayana University, Editor-in-Chief of the Udayana Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, and an assessor for the National Accreditation Agency for Higher Education (BAN-PT). She is also the Coordinator of the Bali, Nusa Tenggara Barat, and Nusa Tenggara Timur Chapter of TEFLIN (The Association for the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia) and remains actively involved in professional organizations such as ASIA-TEFL, AALA (Asian Association of Language Assessment), and the Indonesian Linguistic Society (MLI).