CREA’s Sexuality, Gender, and Rights Institute: Exploring Theory and Practice – 20 – 28 June, 2015 Istanbul, Turkey

Accommodation

Accommodation will be on twin-sharing basis. Participants desiring single rooms will have to pay a supplement of USD 550.

Scholarships

A very small number of full and partial scholarships from CREA are available on a need basis. Please note that the scholarship process is competitive.

ONLY individuals who meet all the following criteria are eligible to apply for a scholarship.

• Working for national/local organisation in the global South;
• Working and residing in the global South; and
• Working on sexual rights, LGBT, and sex workers’ rights issues directly

NOT ELIGIBLE: Students; individuals not affiliated with organisations; and individuals working with international organisations.

Selections

Please submit your application as soon as possible. We will be selecting participants each week, in order to begin the process of visa as well as seeking funding opportunities as soon as possible. Though the deadline to submit your application is 30 April 2015, we encourage you to apply much before the deadline.

Funding Opportunities

We encourage participants to approach donors to sponsor their participation. Possible sources for funding include the organisation you work for; your organisation’s donors (some funders will consider travel grants to current grantees); and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), the Ford Foundation, the Global Fund for Women, the International Women’s Health Coalition, Mama Cash, and Open Society Foundations. We suggest that you begin researching options immediately upon submitting your application to us.

Participating Faculty

Alice Miller, JD, is a scholar and advocate on the faculty of Yale University’s School of Public Health and Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and a spring Adjunct at Yale Law School. She co-directs the Global Health Justice Partnership, a joint initiative of the Law and Public Health Schools. Previously, Miller taught at the UC Berkeley Law School as well as Columbia University, where she co-directed the Center (now Institute) for the Study of Human Rights and Master’s Program in Human Rights jointly appointed to the Public Health and International and Public Affairs Schools. She teaches and writes in the areas of sexuality, rights, law, gender, health, and humanitarian issues. She combines extensive US and international advocacy experience with her academic work, specialising in developing a framework for human rights claims in the context of contemporary critical understandings of sexuality, law, and globalised advocacy networks.

Carole S Vance, PhD, MPH, teaches anthropology, human rights, health and sexuality at Columbia University, where she founded and directed the Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights. She has extensively written about sexual theory; trafficking; science, sexuality, gender, and health; and policy controversies about sexual expression and imagery. She is the editor of Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality(1982, 1993).  She is the recipient of the David R Kessler Award for lifetime contribution to the study of sexuality (2005) and the Simon-Gagnon Award for career contributions to the study of sexualities (2014).

Geetanjali Misra is co-Founder and Executive Director of CREA and co-Director of the Sexuality and Rights Institute in India. She has worked at the activist, grant-making, and policy levels on issues of sexuality, reproductive health, gender, human rights, and violence against women. She writes on issues of sexuality, gender, and rights, and has co-edited Sexuality, Gender, and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice in South and Southeast Asia (2005).

Huang Yingying is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, and Deputy Director, Institute of Sexuality and Gender, at Renmin University in China. She bases her research in China and focuses on female sex workers, male clients, women’s body and sexuality, social aspects of HIV/AIDS, and research methodology on sexuality. She is the author of the book Body, Sexuality and Xinggan (sexiness): Study on Chinese Women’s Daily Lives (2008) and several publications on female sex workers and male clients in China since 1999. Dr Huang has also worked as gender consultant for several international HIV/AIDS projects since 2003, and is one of the key sponsors of the biannual international conference on Sexualities in China, which started in 2007.

Janet Price is an activist and academic, who works at the intersection of disability, sexuality, and gender. Based in Liverpool, UK, she has been involved with CREA for over a decade, raising the profile of sexuality issues for disabled people. In partnership with disabled and non-disabled colleagues from Nigeria, India, Kenya, and Australia, amongst others, she convened the Third Disability, Sexuality, and Rights Online Institute at the end of 2013. She maintains her academic links through her involvement with the Gender and Health Group at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. She is also on the Board of Disability and Deaf Arts (DaDa), Liverpool, which holds a biennial International Festival, DaDaFest. The last DaDaFest was a part of the cultural initiative of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012, and the next will be in 2014, combined with a Congress addressing the value of disability arts as a route to greater control and power for disabled people.

Meena Saraswathi Seshu is the General Secretary of SANGRAM, an organisation that works on the rights of sex workers and people living with HIV/AIDS. SANGRAM’s Centre for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation (CASAM) advocates for the reduction of stigma, violence, and harassment of marginalised communities, especially those who have challenged dominant norms. Seshu is part of the UNAIDS Reference Group on Human Rights and HIV. In 2002, she was awarded the Human Rights Defender Award by the Human Rights Watch. Seshu delivered the Jonathan Mann memorial lecture as a plenary speaker at the 2010 International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, and at the 2012 Sex Worker Freedom Festival in Kolkata, India.

Oliver Phillips is currently a Reader in Law at the University of Westminster in London, England, as well as a Visiting Professor at the Southern and Eastern African Regional Centre for Women’s Law (SEARCWL) at the University of Zimbabwe. He has a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Cambridge, and has written extensively on sexuality, human rights and the law in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Oliver was one of the founders of GALZ (Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe) and of the UK charity FOTAC (Friends of the Treatment Action Campaign); from 2002-2009 he was Deputy Chair of the Britain-Zimbabwe Society (BZS). At present, he serves as an expert witness in relation to applications for asylum made by Zimbabweans in the UK; he is also on the board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), and the advisory board of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO).

Sealing Cheng,* DPhil, is Associate Professor in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her doctorate from the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford University. She was then a Rockefeller postdoctoral fellow in Gender, Sexuality, Health, and Human Rights at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Between 2005 and 2012, she taught in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, Wellesley College. Her research is focused on sexuality with reference to sex work, human trafficking, women’s activism, and policy-making. Her book, On the Move for Love: Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea (University of Pennsylvania Press 2010) received the Distinguished Book Award of the Sexualities Section of the American Sociological Association in 2012.

Svati P Shah, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with an adjunct appointment in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Shah’s work has been published in a range of academic journals and popular publications, including Cultural Dynamics, Rethinking Marxism, Al Jazeera America, and The Caravan. Her book, Seeing Sexual Commerce: Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai, on sex work and migration in Mumbai’s informal sector, was published in 2014 by Duke University Press. She is currently working on a book on red light districts in India, and a new project on the left and the politics of LGBTQ movements in India.

Transgender Europe*: TGEU was established on the first European Transgender Council in Vienna in November 2005 and formally registered as an Austrian charitable organisation 14 months later. Run as a volunteer organisation for many years TGEU established itself as legitimate voice of the trans community in Europe.TGEU successfully continues to combine advocacy work on the European level with work on the national level in partnership with our members with and for local communities. A representative from TGEU will be teaching at the Institute.

Special Lecture

Shohini Ghosh is Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, (Central University) New Delhi, India. She is the director of Tales of the Nightfairies(2002) a film about the Sex Workers Rights Movement in Calcutta and the author Fire: A Queer Classic(2010) published by Arsenal Pulp Press, Canada and Orient Publishing in India. She is co-founder member of Mediastorm Collective, India’s first all women documentary production collective which received The Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Work among Women Media Professionals in 1992. Ghosh has been Visiting Professor in a number of universities within and outside India and has had a long association with the Sexuality, Gender and Rights Institute. Ghosh writes on contemporary media, speech and censorship, popular cinema, documentary and issues of gender and sexuality. Her current work is titled Violence and the Spectral Muslim: Action, Affect and Bombay Cinema at the Turn of the 20th Century.

*To be confirmed

Applications are due on or before 30 April 2015. Applications received after this date will not be considered. Applicants will be informed about the selection decisions by 8 May 2015.

Contact Person: Sushma Luthra; Email: sluthra@creaworld.org or crea@creaworld.org

Quick Links

•  Online Application Form
•  CREA website