Thinking Gender Justice: Oppression, Resistance, Liberation is the second conference of the Centre for Gender, Feminisms and Sexualities (CGFS), University College Dublin, taking place 17-19 June 2026.

We aim to bring together academics, activists, artists and others committed to liberatory knowledge and action, transdisciplinary perspectives, and coalitional community-building in feminist, queer, race-critical, decolonial, and anti-capitalist research, activism, and living. 

During this time of authoritarian surge, genocide, and war – including the war on migrants, women and on gender and sexual minorities – how do we build resistances and foster movements toward liberation?

Indigenous peoples and people of the Global South have long been at the front line of building resistances against racial capitalism, border regimes and the struggle for environmental justice. Women have been at the forefront of uprisings, revolutions and resistance across the globe.

How does or how can our work as researchers, activists, and artists contribute to local and global strategies to build resistance, coalition and solidarity? How do anti-colonial and decolonial knowledge and praxis transform practices in our movements as well as academic practice? What does true solidarity look like and what must we do to work toward it? What is the role of culture, media and the arts in building feminist, trans and queer resistances and the ongoing work of transformative justice?

The aim of this conference is to reflect on these and related questions from a range of disciplinary fields and perspectives that share an active commitment to building resistance and working toward justice and transformative change in Ireland and globally.

Confirmed plenary sessions:

• Keynote: Rania Jawad, “‘Getting a Signal’: telecommunications, women writing, and our contemporary genocide”
  Department of English Language and Literature, Birzeit University (BZU), Palestine
• Keynote: Sophie Lewis, “When Real Feminists Do Fascism”
  Author of Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen and Girlbosses Against Liberation, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against the Family, and Femmephilia
• Roundtable: Queer Lives in Motion
  LGBTIQ+ Activism, Exile, and Solidarity Across Borders
• Film screening: TITE Film Festival: Righting Wrongs
  Unfairness, Mistreatment and Catharsis in New Trans Cinema

CGFS Statement of Principles

UCD Centre for Gender, Feminisms & Sexualities (CGFS) is committed to working from an inclusive, social justice, anti-racist, anti-ableist queer feminist perspective. As a feminist organisation, we stand in full solidarity with trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming people. We affirm the principle of equality of every human being and stand against all forms of discrimination, bigotry, oppression and domination. We will not knowingly collaborate with or admit any group or individual to our organising or events who promotes the exclusion of, or demeans any person or group on grounds of ethnicity, status, nationality, gender, culture, religious belief, orientation, or socio-economic status.