Conference Speakers

Meet the Esteemed Women Studies Conference Speakers

The World Conference on Women’s Studies 2027 will bring together distinguished scholars, researchers, educators, practitioners, and advocates whose work is advancing women’s studies and gender justice worldwide.

Through keynote addresses, plenary sessions, and interactive workshops, conference speakers will share interdisciplinary perspectives on gender politics, feminist and decolonial scholarship, women’s rights and health, sexuality and culture, identity, education, social transformation, and inclusive development.

Their research, professional experience, and community engagement will encourage critical dialogue, introduce context-responsive approaches, and strengthen collaboration among participants from diverse disciplines and regions.

Keynote Speakers

Prof Tinuade Adekunbi Ojo is an Associate Professor and honours coordinator at the Department of Politics and International Relations. She is also a senior research fellow and leads the Pan African Women Studies Unit at the Institute of Pan African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg. She is passionate, energetic, and authentic with her approaches working on her annual project on “Women’s Impact: Innovations and Sustainability in Africa (WIISA)”. She is a Global Transformational Keynote Speaker, Educational Consultant, And Mentoring Coach who impacts others for PURPOSE!  As a feminist political economist, her work explores gender and politics, the gendered dimension of trade, financial inclusion, gender and climate change, sustainable development goals, digital transformation in policy, politics and digitalisation, international political economy, gender inequality and poverty reduction strategies. Tinuade has published many works on gender and development policy and the IMF’s external relations with Africa, BRICS, Southern Africa, and West Africa, focusing on the political economy of trade and aid. In addition, she has acted as a peer reviewer for renowned scientific journals.

Plenary Speakers

Dr. Vanessa Marr (RSA, SFAHE) is Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton, Honorary Lecturer at University of St Andrews, UK, and mother to four daughters. Specialising in creative research and teaching methods, her work has made international impact, using embroidery, drawing, and creative writing to explore themes of gender, narrative, and activism through a feminist lens. She is best known for her award-winning collaborative project Domestic Dusters, which collects embroidered dusting cloths on the theme of domesticity from women across the world. Marr has published and exhibited internationally on motherhood, craftivism, and autoethnography, and led funded community-focused research projects that entice social change.

Dr. Huyen T. T. Nguyen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work (FIFSW), University of Toronto (2026–2028) and Principal Investigator of a KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up (2024–2026) focusing on maternal mental health and well-being. She earned her Ph.D. in Regional Cooperation Studies from the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies (GSICS) at Kobe University, where she also served as a Research Fellow. Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender, culture, education, and motherhood, with a particular focus on maternal well-being and the social and structural conditions that shape mothers’ lives. Her recent publication in the Journal of International Women’s Studies conceptualizes maternal well-being as a distinct construct. She has also worked as a Lecturer at Vietnam National University and as a consultant for the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). She has presented her research at various international conferences and symposia.

Dr. Jennifer Bacon is a Core Doctoral Faculty member in Human Development at Fielding Graduate University. She is a former Core Associate Professor and Department Chair at Naropa University, and a former Associate Dean at Naropa College. Dr. Bacon’s most recent maternal scholarship publications which include “Motherhood in the Academy: The Impact of MotherScholars,” “I Am a Mama-Scholar,” “Black Mothers and Daughters: The Dance of Grief, Love, and Legacy,” “Black Feminist Theory Qualitative Research,” and “Academic Mothering: Black Women Mentors in Higher Education,” are based on her research on faculty and doctoral MotherScholars, theoretical grounding in Black feminist thought and matricentric feminism, as well as her own lived experience. She is the author of the books: Sisters in the Dissertation House: A Dissertation Narrative, These Black Kids: Culturally Responsive Poetry and The Lived Experience of African American Adolescent Girls, and a children’s book titled, I Am an Antiracist Superhero!

Zixuan Liao (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Brock University in Canada. Zixuan’s research interests span a range of interdisciplinary fields, including feminist theory, image studies, motherhood studies, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and semiotics. Her doctoral project conducts a formal and psychoanalytic inquiry into the contemporary image of mother and mothering in daughter-artists’ visual artworks. This research also seeks to influence societal perceptions of motherhood, family dynamics, and gender roles beyond academia.

Maria Collier de Mendonça is a professor in the Graduate Program in Communication at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). She holds a PhD in Communication and Semiotics (PUC-SP), and worked as a visiting researcher at York University (2013). Her dissertation explored motherhood in advertising. She is the coordinator of the Mothering, Media, and Childhood Project (@mmi.ufpe), and is a mother of one daughter. Her research focuses on motherhood, advertising, consumer culture, social media, qualitative research, and semiotics. She is also involved in the promotion of inclusion and equity for students and scholars who are academic mothers in Brazil.

Dr Hannah Slootjes is a lecturer in occupational therapy at La Trobe University, Australia, and a pracademic advancing women’s and girls’ health and occupational wellbeing across the life course. Her research brings feminist theory, gender-responsive practice, occupational justice and knowledge translation into conversation with matrescence, motherhood and perinatal health. Her PhD examined the role of occupational therapists in perinatal health and she is lead editor and co-author of the 2025 Routledge textbook Enhancing Women’s Wellbeing During Matrescence, Motherhood, and Perinatal Transitions. Her work challenges reductive approaches to women’s health and examines how women’s occupations, relationships, environments and social conditions shape wellbeing, agency and participation. She presents internationally across occupational therapy, maternal health and women’s health, and was a board member for the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative special issue on matricentric feminism. Her scholarship seeks to bridge disciplinary and research-practice divides through mother-centred, inclusive and socially responsive approaches.

Panel Moderators

Dr. Andrea O’Reilly is internationally recognized as the founder of Motherhood Studies and its subfield Maternal Theory, creator of Matricentric Feminism, a feminism for and about mothers and Matricritics, a literary theory and practice for reading mother-focused texts. She is full professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at York University, founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative (1999-) and publisher of Demeter Press (2006-).  She is co-editor/editor of thirty-plus books on many motherhood topics and is editor of the encyclopedia of motherhood (Sage, 2010), co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Motherhood (2020) with its 2nd edition to be published in 2027, and editor of the Routledge Handbook to Motherhood and Contemporary Literature to be published in early 2027. She is author of four monographs including In (M)otherwords; Writings on Mothering and Motherhood, 2009-2024 (2024) and Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, Practice, the 2nd Edition (2021).

Tatjana Takševa is an interdisciplinary feminist scholar whose work brings motherhood studies into sustained conversation with feminist theory, transnational feminism, reproductive justice, and the study of violence and memory. Her scholarship has examined maternal subjectivity, maternal ambivalence, intensive mothering, motherhood and conflict, and the experiences of mothers raising children born of wartime rape. She is the author of “One Is Not Born but Rather Becomes a Mother: Claiming the Maternal in Women and Gender Studies” and “Motherhood Studies and Feminist Theory: Elisions and Intersections,” and co-editor of Mothering Under Fire: Mothers and Mothering in Conflict Zones. Her recent work extends these concerns through a transnational feminist analysis of the maternal in diverse European contexts. She has presented her research internationally, including the 2018 and 2025 Matricentric Feminism conferences, the 2024 Innsbrucker European Gender Lectures, and numerous forums on motherhood, reproductive justice, gender-based violence, and transnational feminism.

Conference Speakers

Meet the Esteemed Women Studies Conference Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Prof. Tinuade Adekunbi Ojo

Plenary Speakers

Dr. Vanessa Marr

Dr. Huyen Thi-Thanh Nguyen

Dr. Jennifer N. Bacon

Dr. Zixuan Liao

Dr. Maria Collier de Mendonça

Dr. Hannah Slootjes

Panel Moderators

Dr. Andrea O'Reilly

Dr. Tatjana Takševa

Workshop Speakers

Dr. Natasha Mortley

Dr. Halimah DeShong

Prof. Laura Coradi

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