We are delighted to announce a few of the confirmed speakers for FiLiA 2021. Scroll down for the list (so far…).
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Rachel Ara
Rachel Ara is a conceptual and data artist who explores the relationships between sex, gender, technology and systems of power. She graduated with a Fine Art degree from Goldsmiths College, London, where she won the prestigious Burston award. As a multi-disciplinary artist, she has a diverse skillset acquired from working 25 years in the tech industry to being a trained cabinet maker and combines them to make unique and often surprising installations and sculptures. The works are nonconformist with a socio-political edge that often incorporates humour and irony with feminist & queer concerns.
Julie Bindel
Julie Bindel is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and researcher. She has been active in the global campaign to end violence towards women and children since 1979 and has written extensively on rape, domestic violence, sexually motivated murder, prostitution and trafficking, child sexual exploitation, stalking, and the rise of religious fundamentalism and its harm to women and girls.
Irune Costumero
Irune Costumero has become an iconic figure in women’s fight against ‘parental alienation syndrome’ in Spain and Latin America. From Vizcaya, Spain, she is a philologist, a linguist, a teacher, a feminist, and today a specialist in the false PAS. Irune’s case caught the attention of the UN’s Special Envoy for Women. In a damning letter to the Spanish State, it has demanded an explanation from the Spanish Government for the use of the non-existent ‘Parental Alienation’ syndrome in her case. The case initiated by Irune against Council of Vizcaya’s Children’s Service’s officials is going through hearings (these began on June 6, Bilbao) and is receiving remarkable attention from the media.
Maya Forstater
Maya is a feminist campaigner who writes about sex and gender issues. She challenged her former employer through the Employment Tribunal after she lost her job because of her gender-critical beliefs. She initially lost her case but won on appeal after the High Court judge ruled her "gender-critical" beliefs fell under the Equalities Act.
Her case was a pivotal one that sought to protect the language and values that underpin women’s sex-based rights. It has shone a light on the issue and furthered the discussion amount the public.
Stephanie Davies-Arai
Stephanie Davies-Arai is a feminist, a mother, and campaigner against cultural messages that promote harmful social ‘norms’. Stephanie established Transgender Trend, which describes itself as “a group of parents and professionals concerned about the current trend to diagnose ‘gender non-conforming’ children as transgender.”
She speaks and writes extensively on the transgendering of children. Transgender Trend’s website is a treasure trove of information, it includes comprehensive guides for schools, created in conjunction with teachers, child protection professionals, and lawyers. Stephanie’s work was shortlisted for the John Maddox Prize in 2018, which “recognises the work of individuals who promote sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest, facing difficulty or hostility in doing so.” Recently, Transgender Trend intervened in the judicial review brought by Keira Bell and Mrs A against the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, questioning whether under-18s can give valid informed consent to puberty blockers and hormonal interventions for gender dysphoria.
Esuantsiwa (Esua) Jane Goldsmith
Esua is a British-Ghanaian Feminist author, campaigner, and facilitator, and Director and founder of Anona Development Consultancy. She has worked in the not-for-profit sector for over 40 years with more than 100 organisations on five continents, as leader, Chair, Director, and consultant. In 2015 Leicester University awarded her an Honorary Doctorate for her lifetime’s work in Women’s Rights. Her Mixed-Race Memoir, the Space Between Black and White, was published in 2020 #twentyin2020
Gill Hague
Gill Hague has been a campaigner for women's rights for 50 years and has been involved in international projects across the world, from India and Uganda to Iraqi Kurdistan. For her life’s work on gender violence, she has received two national awards including the prestigious Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize for her life's work on violence against women.
She is the Professor Emerita of Violence Against Women Studies at the University of Bristol and has been an activist, practitioner and researcher on violence against women nationally and internationally since the early 1970s. She was a founder of the Centre for Gender and Violence Research, School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol and has over 130 publications on violence against women including eight books.
Susan Hawthorne
Susan Hawthorne is an Australian writer, poet, political commentator and publisher. She holds a PhD in Political Science and Women's Studies and has written extensively about ecology, radical feminism, economics, war and international relations. In recent years she has researched the terrible torture of lesbians and written about human rights in relation to lesbians.
She is an Adjunct Professor in the Writing Program and James Cook University, Townsville and has supervised postgraduate students in fiction, poetry and publishing studies for almost twenty years. She is also co-founder (with Renate Klein) and director of the independent feminist publishing house, Spinifex Press which publishes international and local feminist books and eBooks.
Renata Klein
Renate Klein is an Australian academic, writer, publisher and feminist health activist. Klein was an associate professor in women's studies at Deakin University until her retirement in 2006, and with Dr Susan Hawthorne she co-founded the independent feminist publishing company, Spinifex Press in 1991. She is herself the author and editor of 14 books, many of which explore reproductive technologies and the medicalisation of women.
Houzan Mahmoud
Houzan Mahmoud is a Kurdish feminist, writer and anti-war activist from South Kurdistan. She was one of the speakers at the anti-war rally in March 2003 in London and is the co-founder of the Culture Project, a platform for Kurdish feminists, writers and activists. She has written for the Guardian, openDemocracy, Independent and New Statesman.
Lyubava Malysheva
Poet and radical journalist in Russia. Founder of femicide.net. Read our interview with Lyubava here.
Rebecca Morden
After graduating from Bristol Old Vic and working in film, theatre and television, Rebecca became disillusioned by the dearth of roles and opportunities for women. She created award-winning production hub Scary Little Girls, populating stories with diverse female characters.
With SLG Rebecca has written, directed, produced and performed while working with a wide range of partners including BFI, Glastonbury Festival and Hall for Cornwall (for whom she is an Associate Artist). She is a founder member of KerPow, Cornish female artists tackling sex and gender discrimination. Rebecca is a grassroots campaigner against male violence and frequent guest on BBC Radio and Sky News. This year she was also commissioned by Radio 4 to write and perform for the UK Project and to co-write and present an episode of Archive on Four.
Her co-authored book about the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Out of the Darkness is printed by The History Press.
Maggy Moyo
Maggy Moyo is a human rights campaigner. She is passionate about advocating for human rights including the rights of immigrants, migrants, marginalised groups (e.g. LGBT rights) and those of vulnerable women, children, the disabled and the elderly.
She fights against social injustice and advocates for equality. She is involved with a few organisations in Manchester that are fighting for the same cause.
*LISG Manchester*, *Manchester Rape Crisis* also *Restoration of Human Rights (ROHR) Zimbabwe* and is in the Executive Committee of the North Branch of their UK.
She is currently working for *Right to Remain* as the Organizer for Manchester for *These Walls Must Fall” (TWMF) campaign*, a network of community-based campaigners who are part of a movement to end immigration detention in the UK.
Right to Remain is a registered charity which works with communities, groups and organisations across the UK providing information, resources, training and assistance to help people to establish their right to remain and challenges injustice in the immigration and asylum system.
Jenni Murray
Dame Jenni Murray DBE is a journalist, broadcaster and was the presenter of BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour between 1987 and 2020. She is patron of the Family Planning Association and Breast Cancer Campaign and non-executive director of the Christie Cancer Hospital, as well as author of a number of books on women's health and history and regular commentator in the press.
Milli Hill
Bestselling author and an expert in women’s rights in childbirth and throughout their reproductive lives, Milli Hill, found herself at the epicentre of a bullying and ostracism campaign last year that has spanned over eight months of her life. Recently, she published an essay titled ‘I will not be silenced’ where she details her experiences of ostracism and abuse in the birthing community, after stating that obstetric violence constitutes sex-based violence and is, therefore, a form of violence against women.
Natalie Page
Founder of #TheCourtSaid and Court Confidence and Director of the Survivor Family Network, which challenges how abuse is treated in family court.
Natalie Page will be talking about the changes in the Family Court following the passing of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
Helen Lewis
Author of 'Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights, Helen Lewis is a staff writer at the Atlantic, and a former deputy editor of the New Statesman. She has written for the Guardian, Sunday Times, New York Times and Vogue. She is a regular host of BBC Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster, a regular panellist on The News Quiz and Saturday Review, and a paper reviewer on The Andrew Marr Show. She was the 2018/19 Women in the Humanities Honorary Writing Fellow at Oxford University. She tweets at @helenlewis.
Laoise Uí Aodha de Brún
Laoise Uí Aodha de Brún, Founder & spokesperson of 'The Countess Didn't Fight For This' will be joining us from Ireland.
The Countess is a voluntary, non-partisan group advocating for, and centring women & children. Specifically, it campaigns to amend the Gender Recognition Act to include medical gatekeeping and safeguarding.
The Countess recently commissioned the first-ever independent survey into attitudes to gender in Ireland. It has revealed widespread support among the Irish public for single-sex spaces, services and sports.
Radical Girlsss
Olesia Sagaidak, Natasha Noreen, Justine Cassar, Azura Farell, Alyssa Ahrabare, Adriana S. Thiago, Aleksandra Kusnierkiewicz, and Bec Wonders from
#radicalgirlsss will be speaking at FiLiA2021. #radicalgirlsss is the young women's wing of the Migrants Women network and they organise twice-yearly educational feminist camps for young migrant and refugee women. They also publish statements, contribute their analysis, take part in debates and represent the network in different political forums.
Diyaar
Diyaar is a women’s Daf group, established in 2017 by Maestro Azin Marzabadi to encourage her advanced Daf London students to hone their skills through group rehearsals, engagements, and performances.
Diyaar empowers Iranian women and girls through the Daf instrument, which is an ancient large Persian frame drum played by men in contemporary history. Today the Daf is becoming the most popular instrument for women in Iran who continue to make a break with the restrictions and limitations imposed on women musicians and artists.
Diyaar is the only women’s Daf group in the UK creating a positive environment for women to practice and perform this powerful art form.
Emma Humprey’s Memorial Prize
This year the Emma Humphrey’s Memorial Prize will be awarded at FiLiA 2021.
Emma was a writer, campaigner and survivor of male violence who fought an historic struggle to overturn a murder conviction, supported by Justice for Women and other feminist campaigners. Following her release in 1995, she was determined to continue campaigning for the rights of other women who had been subjected to male violence.
Tragically, Emma died only three years after her release from prison. Every year since her death in 1998, the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize has given two awards to feminist campaigners in honour of Emma. The awards carry a prize of £1,000 and are given to women campaigners and to campaign groups who have, through writing or campaigning, raised awareness of violence against women and children. The awards aim to provide recognition for work against violence and to bring it to the attention of a wider public.
Halaleh Taheri
Halaleh is the Founder and Executive Director of the Middle Eastern Women & Society Organisation (MEWSo). She began the charity after realising the huge numbers of displaced women in London who need help integrating and navigating their way around the society of their new homeland.
It follows her own extraordinary story of fighting the Shah of Iran during the 1979 Revolution and fighting the Islamic extremists who subsequently took over. After moving to Iraq, she had to flee again 11 years later during the first Gulf War in 1992.
As an asylum seeker, she first moved to Sweden where she gained a degree in Pedagogy (the science of teaching), qualified as a social worker, and began campaigning for the rights of women and children. In 2005 she moved to London and found her particular skills were needed here more than ever. She continues to campaign for the rights of women and for a more just society for everyone.
Joan Smith
Joan Smith is a novelist, journalist, campaigner for human rights and a former chair of the Writers in Prison Committee at International PEN. She writes for several national newspapers, including the Independent, and is a regular broadcaster. She is the author of What Will Survive, Moralities, the highly acclaimed Misogynies and five detective novels.
Marguerite Stern
A former member of the feminist international movement Femen, Marguerite Stern, is one of the younger generation of feminists who has been bullied, cancelled and de-platformed because of her tireless activism against male violence towards women and girls.
Creator of collages contre les féminicides / ex FEMEN / Producer of podcasts / Author of the book "Heroines of the street".
Natasha Noreen
Natasha is an activist advocating for migrant and women’s rights in Italy and Pakistan. Member of ENOMW(European Network of Migrant women) and Radical Girlsss to promote the rights of women and girls.
Jane Traies
Writer, researcher, storyteller. Oral history, life history, lesbian history. Author of 'Free to Be Me' - stories from the Lesbian Immigration Support Group.