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Meet the Esteemed Women Studies Conference Speakers

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Priyanka Tripathi

Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Patna
India

Priyanka Tripathi is an Associate Professor of English and former Head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Patna (India). She is also the Associate Editor for the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Taylor & Francis). In the past, she has received prestigious fellowships like, Charles Wallace India Trust Visiting Fellowship (2024-25) at the School of History, University of Leeds, and IPD Visiting Research Fellowship (2022-23) at IASH, University of Edinburgh. Her monograph with Bloomsbury is titled The Gendered War: Evaluating Feminist Ethnographic Narratives of the 1971 War of Bangladesh (2022). Her forthcoming monograph with the National Book Trust of India is titled Mann Ki Baat & Bharatiya Art, Culture and Heritage. She works in the areas of Medical Humanities, Gender Studies, South Asian Fiction, and Graphic Novels.

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

Title: "Women’s Reclamation: Breaking Free with the Ancient Wisdom of Creativism"

Dr. Indrani Margolin

Professor
School of Social Work
University of Northern British Columbia
Canada

Dr. Indrani Margolin is a leader; a researcher; a teacher; and the first female full professor in the School of Social Work, at the University of Northern British Columbia. She is honoured to live and work on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Lheidli T’enneh. Dr. Indrani is also part of the Women’s & Gender Studies and Health Sciences graduate faculty. Established in Vedantic inquiry, which honours both ancient wisdom and contemporary understanding of unity (Advaita), she carries forward the Vedic mathematics that sound creates. As the protégé of Master Teacher Tulshi Sen, from a long lineage of Himalayan masters, she has learned the power of sound through being, thought and word to create Ex-Nihilo (out of no-thing) and applies this to her qualitative arts-based research and holistic, transformative teaching. As a proud recipient of the 2025 UNBC Teaching Excellence Award, she is recognized for her curricular contributions to spirituality & creativity in higher education and championing the interweaving of theoretical and experiential learning. The spirit of these teachings comes directly from Master Sen’s manifesto of Creativism. Her dedication to integrating spirituality into the fabric of social work and education is reflected in her co-developed Spiritual Practice Model (SPM) and Spiritually-Informed Pedagogy (SIP) and related classes. Since 2011, she has co-led Northern FIRE (Feminist Institute for Research & Evaluation) and committed to shaping programs and resources that support survivors of violence. She seeks to advance the discourse on creativity, wellbeing, posttraumatic growth, and spiritual development and champions women’s, students’, and helping professionals’ creative process encompassed by the four eternal truths termed Mahavakyam Meditation.

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

Title: "Pedagogies of Authenticity as Decolonial Feminist Praxis in Higher Education"

Dr. Neziswa Titi

University of Cape Town
South Africa

Neziswa Vuyasande Titi (PhD) is a transdisciplinary scholar‑activist in the Department of African Feminist Studies at the University of Cape Town. Her work centers on decolonial, African‑centered and child‑centric methodologies, with a focus on gender‑based violence (GBV), child sexual trauma, and access to services grounded in feminist African Psychology praxis. She champions decolonial and multilingual pedagogies and integrates these frameworks into her teaching and supervision at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Dr. Titi’s contributions to the academia and institutional governance span from 2007 through positions at the University of the Western Cape, University of South Africa, the Medical Research Council of South Africa, Pearson Institute of Higher Education/Midrand Graduate Institute, and currently through the University of Cape Town where she teaches and serves in Student Discipline Tribunal of Appeal and research ethics and postgraduate admissions committees. Recognised as one of the most influential Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans (2021), her leadership regionally influences Pan‑African feminist activism (2019–current), and globally, the evaluation for the Ford Foundation’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice Program (2024–2025), and advisory work on the MenEngage (2023) decolonial agenda. She has also served within the Psychological Society of South Africa’s Division of Research Methodologies (2019–2021) the International Canadian Child Rights Partnership (2021–2022), and Lentegeur Psychiatric Hospital Board (2023-2024), alongside her ongoing engagements in global Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) dialogues for humanitarian settings (2023–present), adolescent mental health and access to education in townships (2022-present) and Board membership at Childline Western Cape (2021-current).

Plenary Speaker

Title: "Feminism and the Politics of Everything"

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).

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Conference Speakers

Meet the Esteemed Women Studies Conference Speakers

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Priyanka Tripathi

Plenary Speaker

Plenary Speaker

Title: "Women’s Reclamation: Breaking Free with the Ancient Wisdom of Creativism"

Plenary Speaker

Plenary Speaker

Title: "Pedagogies of Authenticity as Decolonial Feminist Praxis in Higher Education"

Plenary Speaker

Title: "Feminism and the Politics of Everything"

Plenary Speaker

Workshop Speaker

Check out the special Features of WCWS 2026

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