Rosemarie Buikema is Professor of Art, Culture and Diversity at Utrecht University. She is chair of the UU Graduate Gender Programme (GGeP) and scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG). Buikema coordinates the UU's share of the Erasmus Mundus Master in Gender Studies (GEMMA) and leads the annual international Summer School in Gender Studies: NOISE. In addition, she is co-chair of the Hub Gender and Diversity: Building an Inclusive Society (part of Institutions for Open Society at Utrecht University) and she is the initiator and project leader of MOED, Museum of Equality and Difference.

She has extensive experience in supervising and leading major cultural and academic events and projects. She was the project leader of an EU FP6 Early Stage Research training program that delivered 39 PHDs across the EU. Buikema’s research concerns the analysis and development of methods, means and measures which can transition communities away from the violence intrinsic in processes of exclusion and discrimination to just and equitable relations. She is in particular interested in how cultural forms themselves can embody and unlock the forces of resistance. Between 2015 and 2020 she was the principal researcher of the work package textual and artistic cultures of gender equality of the GRACE project, part of Horizon 2020.

Buikema’s research concerns the analysis and development of methods, means and measures which can transition communities away from the violence intrinsic in processes of exclusion and discrimination to just and equitable relations. She is in particular interested in how cultural forms themselves can embody and unlock the forces of resistance.

She is the author of 5 monographs and (co-)editor of 10 edited volumes. She has published widely in the field of feminist and postcolonial theory in international journals such as European Journal of Women's Studies; Women's Studies International Forum; Journal of Gender Studies; European Journal of English Studies; Journal of European Studies; Interventions. International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; Memory Studies; Men and Masculinities; Culture, Health and Sexuality among others. Among her latest co-edited volumes are: Cultures Citizenship and Human Rights (Routledge 2019) Doing Gender in Media Art and Culture (Routledge 2017 and Routledge 2009), Theories and Methodologies in Feminist Research (Routledge 2011) and From Boys to Men (University of Cape Town Press 2007). She was also co-editor of two volumes on Arts in Motion in the series Culture and Migration in the Netherlands (Sdu 2003 and 2004) funded by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.

In her recent monograph Revolts in Cultural Critique (Rowman&Littlefield 2020) she combines theories of transitional justice, the politics of aesthetics, and theories of difference and equality to develop new and multi-layered scenarios for change and transnational justice.

Role in the project: project leader

Deirdre Donoghue will receive her doctoral degree - with her research on maternal subjectivities, materialities, artistic processes, aesthetics, ethics and affect - in Summer 2021.

She is a visual and performance artist, director of the international m/other voices foundation for art, research, theory / dialogue / community involvement, a founding member of ADA: Area for Debate and Art, a mother and a birthdoula.

In her artistic work she most often sets up social scenarios and specifically framed human encounters where multiple relations can be set into motion, through which the production of new knowledge systems via cross-disciplinary approach becomes mobilized. She has taught critical feminist perspectives for art students, worked as an external examiner and thesis reader for BA and MA-level students across Fine Art, Design and Visual Culture programs in Finland and The Netherlands, as well as exhibited her art work, and collaborated, internationally.

Her work for the m/other voices foundation builds international networks between mother artists and scholars, supports and publishes monthly columns by artist-mothers and other cultural re-producers, organises conferences, such as The Mothernists (2015), Mothernists II: Who Cares For The 21st Millenium? (2017) and programs such as the Legacy of Love Doulas, offering free doula services for refugees, single mothers and low- and no-income women and families in The Netherlands.

As a birthdoula her tasks include listening, giving psychosocial support, educating and holding space for women before, during and after labour as they become mothers.

She holds a BA in Photography and Digital Studies from Dublin Institute of Technology (IRL), Masters in fine Art from Piet Zwart Institute (NL) and a PhD from Utrecht University (NL).

Role in the project: Researcher

Astrid is the project coordinator of MOED Museum of Equality and Difference. Besides, she is a research and education assistant within the Utrecht Graduate Gender Programme (GGeP) and part of the managing team of UU’s Gender & Diversity Hub. As a researcher, she has been involved in a research project on stereotypes, representations, and stigmatizations in a selection of TV programmes by analyzing the effects of unconscious biases in the production processes of these programmes (commissioned by the Dutch public broadcasting network NTR, 2020), and in a project on the position of women artists in The Netherlands (commissioned by Mama Cash, 2019).

Role in the project: Research assistant

Domitilla Olivieri is assistant professor and an anthropologist, activist, researcher and teacher in the field of gender studies, media and society. She is active in academic, artistic and other political spaces and have been involved for many years in feminist, queer, anti-racist, anti-capitalist militant activism. Her research and didactics are in the field of documentary film, gender and postcolonial studies, visual anthropology, media and cultural studies.

Committed to bridging the distance between academic and non-academic communities, Olivieri collaborate with festivals, community projects, NGOs and activists groups.

Her academic publications include the article “Diasporic proximities: spaces of ‘home’ in European documentary” in Transnational Cinemas, and a special issue of Feminist Media Studies entitled “Affective Encounters: Tools of Interruption for Activist Media Practices.” Her latest research focusses on documentary practices, time and spaces of the everyday, the politics of othering and mediated encounters, forms of social and political relationality and contestation, and rhythm in (documentary) media.

Role in the project: Researcher