Activism, Change and Feminist Futures: At the intersection of the personal and political
Call for Papers for our fifth joint international annual conference NOW CLOSED
The Call for Papers in now closed
Date: November 5-6 November 2026
University of Liverpool
Keynote speaker
Dr Harriet Samuels
Acting Up, A Time and A Place: Feminist Legal Activism and Social Change
Feminist legal activism faces a moment when two major tools of legal feminism, human rights and equality law, have become targets within the contemporary “culture war”. In this context how can feminists pushback and tell a better story about the need for laws that not only recognise rights but empower those who might otherwise be marginalised? Revisiting Engle-Merry’s work on the constitutive and cultural meaning of law provides a framework for exploring how feminists have simultaneously harnessed, resisted and subverted legal authority (Engle Merry 1995) through techniques such as “cheeky witnessing” (Fletcher 2020) and the “feminist chorus” (Reynolds 2015). It also enables us to reconsider the creativity and significance of historical examples of feminist legal activism in the early twentieth century during comparable periods of social and political polarisation. In doing so, it seeks to illuminate and reflect on individual and collective strategies for feminist engagement with law that are responsive to the stage of legal change.
Bio: Harriet Samuels is Reader in Law at the University of Westminster. Her work sits at the intersection of public law, human rights and feminist legal studies. Her research examines the influence of feminist thought on legal doctrine and law reform, as well as the wider impact of feminist legal theory on the law. More recently her work has engaged with civil society and feminist legal history. She is currently writing a book on the impact of early twentieth century feminists in using strategic litigation to challenge the marriage bar an important step in developing women’s workplace rights.
Keynote speaker
Dr Yemisi Sloane
Beyond Settled Feminist Analytics: Towards New Directions in Feminist Research
Feminist research has produced powerful analytical frameworks that have transformed how power, inequality and gender justice are understood. Concepts such as intersectionality challenged universalised accounts of women’s experiences and highlighted the mutually constitutive nature of gender, race and other structural inequalities. Revisiting these frameworks remains vital. However, they were never intended to become settled academic languages or fixed intellectual inheritances. Conceived as disruptive analytics, they require continual rethinking as power evolves and new norms emerge. Critical questions therefore remain about whether we are sufficiently renewing the foundations of feminist research or unintentionally repeating familiar frameworks. In a period marked by anti-gender politics and deepening inequality, feminist futures require the theoretical and methodological expansion of what can be known about silence, agency and resistance. Drawing on empirical research on sexual violence across diverse contexts, emerging forms of agency and vulnerability are examined that stretch familiar frameworks and invite new directions in feminist knowledge production.
Bio: Yemisi Sloane is a Lecturer in Criminology and Policing at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Her research examines the structural conditions that produce gender-based violence and sustain impunity, with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan African communities and their diasporas in Britain. Her expertise spans multiple forms of violence against women and girls, including domestic and intimate partner violence, sexual violence and exploitation, female genital mutilation and femicide. Her work is grounded in decolonial feminist criminology, feminist jurisprudence and socio-legal scholarship, drawing on ethnographic, qualitative and participatory research to analyse the intersections of violence, identity and resistance in the lived experiences of women from minoritised communities. She collaborates with community organisations, local authorities and public sector partners on initiatives addressing violence prevention, victim support, social inequalities and gender justice. She has presented her work at international academic and policy forums across Europe, Africa and Asia, and is committed to ensuring that academic research informs policy, practice and wider debates on gender justice and women’s rights.