The Center for Research on Gender and Women organizes campus events, including a monthly lecture series, workshops and conferences featuring campus, national, and international speakers. It also sponsors grant-funded research.
A major project, begun in July, 2016, is coordinated by Professor Aili Mari Tripp and focuses on women and peace-building in Africa. The consortium includes the Center for Research on Gender and Women of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen, Norway, and Isis-Women’s International Cross-Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE), in Kampala, Uganda. Nine seasoned researchers affiliated with the project will be working in Algeria, northern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. The two-year project looks at the cost of women’s exclusion and the possibilities for their inclusion in peace talks, peacebuilding, and political institutions in countries affected by war in Africa. The study includes regions with predominantly Muslim populations, with the exception of South Sudan.
Funded by an endowment from the estate of Dr. Gertraude Wittig, the Center sponsors a major initiative on feminist biology. One component is the Wittig Postdoctoral Fellowship in Feminist Biology. The other major component is the biannual Wisconsin Symposium on Feminist Biology, to be held October 5, 2018. The Symposium brings together internationally known experts on feminist biology, to assess the current state of feminist revision of biology and where future progress can be made. The symposium is open to undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, participants from the UW System, and members of the general public.
The Center facilitates networking of gender and women’s studies scholars across campus through our database of women’s studies scholars at University of Wisconsin-Madison and a weekly email bulletin, which announces events, news, grant and award competitions, jobs, and much more. We have also engaged in sustained exchanges with women’s studies scholars in Uganda, Peru, Argentina, Thailand, Germany, United Kingdom and many other parts of the world. We have fostered collaborative research projects and a wide variety of research connections between our faculty and scholars abroad.
We sponsor an Honorary Fellows Program of visiting scholars and host scholars from around the US and the world. We also administer competitions like the Ruth Bleier Scholarship in the Natural Sciences for undergraduates; the Hyde Dissertation Award, the Mary Washburn Willets Award, the Worcester/Whatley/Leavitt Award, and the Deborah A. Hobbins Award in Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice for graduate students; and the Feminist Scholars Fellowship to provide tenured UW faculty working in women and gender studies a full-time research appointment for one semester. We also provide grant information, grant-writing support, and administer grants.