INTERNATIONAL GENDER STUDIES CENTRE AT              LADY MARGARET HALL

 

Our Aims

The Centre's research, teaching and publishing activities aim to analyze and interpret gender differentiation and inequality from a context-sensitive and feminist critical perspective. Gender is key to advancing transformative research methodologies. This entails collaboration with the women and men we study, by including their voices, aspirations and values into critical feminist theorizing. Women and Gender Studies, in the twenty-first century, confront a complex, volatile and rapidly changing world. Important variables such as economic and financial crises, environmental changes, technological innovations, military conflicts, religious schisms and shifts in the global balance of power, continue to create complex contexts.

We strive to identify and interpret the implication of their impact on women and men worldwide, especially amongst populations living in vulnerable and disadvantaged circumstances. Through our research, we seek to interrogate overt and covert changes and continuities in female and male interactions in the domestic and public spheres. This includes researching the role of economic, religious and political institutions in legitimizing and institutionalizing gender disparities, or transforming them for the benefit of society.

The IGS strives to

• document these changes globally
• contextualize findings within cultural settings, tracing their historical origins and evolution
• analyze the implications for agency, choice and well-being
• advise on gendered implications of public policy reflecting the interaction between global and state agendas

We avail ourselves of the rich resources at the University of Oxford

• to teach and mentor young women and men and strenghten our traditional role of providing a congenial environment for research, learning, exchange of ideas and scholarship
• continue to develop the Research Fellowship programme as an opportunity for young scholars at the beginning of their academic career and for senior academics to share their work with a community of like-minded scholars

Through our seminars and workshops, IGS strives to

• create an intellectually stimulating space in which scholars at all stages of their careers present cutting-edge theoretical advances and fieldwork findings
• offer a site for intellectual exchange and debate in an atmosphere of generous support and critical engagement

Through publications, IGS strives to

• disseminate knowledge generated from personal research and seminars and workshops organized at IGS.

Our Centre

The International Gender Studies Centre (IGS) was established at the University of Oxford in 1983, to advance research on gender, culture and social transformation. It grew out of an earlier initiative of a weekly seminar on the anthropology of women at Queen Elizabeth House (known today as The Oxford Department of International Development). This initiative was one of the pioneering achievements of the 1970s women's movement. Over the years, the Centre has undertaken critical scholarly research on the contributions by and the constraints facing women around the globe.

The Centre's members form a multi-disciplinary research unit with backgrounds in social anthropology, human geography, history, literature, law, sociology, development and politics. Through teaching, research, seminars/workshops and publications, they contribute to an informed understanding of the gendered nature of social and cultural life in the UK and elsewhere. 

In July 2011, IGS ended its long and fruitful association with QEH and moved to LMH. The purpose of this new association is for IGS to contribute to research and education on women and gender studies, reflecting the original purppose of LMH and continued interest behind its formation as the first women's college in 1878. This formal association enables IGS to maintain and enhance its relationship with academics in the University of Oxford, as well as departments and faculties with a view to consolidate and expand its academic activities around the world.

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IGS Research Programmes                                                               
           
China                   International          Selected Research Projects