Gill Hague and Nazand Begikhani
Combatting violence against women internationally and in Iraqi Kurdistan
Nazand Begikhani Gill Hague
Violence against women is a widespread global problem, experienced by one in three of the world’s women (World Health Organisation). Professor Emerita Gill Hague and Dr. Nazand Begikhani, from the pioneering Centre for Gender and Violence Research, of which Gill was one of the two founders 27 years ago, explore how we can combat gender-based violence and transform women’s lives internationally, offering inspiring approaches from across the world.
They will discussviolence against women and ‘honour’-based violence in the context of the Middle East, focussing on Iraqi Kurdistan, and will highlight some of the life-changing projects and activism in progress there. While the subject is a distressing one, the event will showcase the transformatory and uplifting work of activists against violence against women internationally. Both speakers are well-known poets and will each conclude the event with a poem.
April 12th. 7.00 – 8.30pm. Waterstones, Union Street, Bristol BS1 3XD
To book: £4/£6
Speakers
Gill Hague is Emerita Professor of Violence Against Women Research. She was one of the two founders (with Ellen Malos), 27 years ago, of the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the University of Bristol which has pioneered research and activism on violence against women and is now one of the largest such centres in the world. She has worked on violence against women as an activist, researcher and professor for 45 years, nationally and internationally. Gill has published around 125 publications on gendered violence, including seven books (with a variety of collaborators), and Domestic Violence: Action for Change (with Ellen Malos) has been published in three editions. The countries in which she has worked in partnership with women’s organisations and NGOs include South Africa, Iraqi Kurdistan, India, Uganda, Canada, the US, Mexico, Malaysia and others.She is also well-known as a poet and has edited two volumes of poetry, and authored one:Cirrus Clouds: Poems of Travelling and Social Justice. In 2013, she received a Life Achievement Special Prize from the Emma Humphreys Memorial Trust for her life’s work on violence against women, the only such prize in the UK.
Nazand Begikhani is an internationally renowned Kurdish poet and women’s rights activist and researcher. She currently works as Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender and Violence Research, University of Bristol, and has over 20 years’ experience in research, writing, advocacy for women’s rights and consultancy. Her writings include a number of articles and books, including eight poetry collections, in Kurdish, English and French. Her latest book (written with Aisha Gill and Gill Hague) is titled Honour-based Violence: Experiences and Counter Strategies in Iraqi Kurdistan and the UK Kurdish Diaspora.Nazand’s work is translated into many languages, including German, Arabic, Persian, Polish, etc. ‘An Ordinary Day’, a poem in her first poetry collection in English, Bells of Speech, was nominated for the Forward Poetry Prize and re-published as ‘One of the best 40 poems of the year’ by Faber & Faber in 2007. In France, Nazand’s Le Lendemain d’Hier won the French Feminin Poetry Prize Simone Landry (2012). She is currently leading a research project looking at gender-based violence and displacement. Nazand was also awarded the UK Emma Humphrey’s Memorial Prize in 2000 and Kurdistan Gender Equality Prize in 2015 for her writings and activism against honour crimes.
Chairperson: Finn Mackay, University of the West of England. Finn is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at UWE. She speaks widely and writes about feminist activism, feminist theory, male violence against women and women's liberation. Finn was the founderof the London Feminist Network and took a leading role in reviving the London Reclaim the Night Marches in 2004.