Gender Equality Seminar Series

The first seminar in our series will take place on the 1^st October 2026 at 12pm, Venue tbc.

This seminar represents key findings from the participatory design project Safety and the City. Responding to neoliberal and depoliticised agendas surrounding gendered understandings of public (un)safety, the project sought to engage residents on their experiences and emotions in urban public space in Limerick City, Ireland. Following a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of text and image-based co-design data, our findings demonstrate the ways in which (un)safety discourses are taken up, supported and contested by those who experience urban space. Our Queer-Feminist reading of (un)safety culminated in three key themes represented here: 1) the city is safe but politically underserved 2) ambivalently responsible forms of subjecthood and 3) political inevitability and complicity. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the ways in which neoliberal urban design creates and maintains distorted relationships between people and places and thwarts alternative visions for fairer futures.

For catering purposes, please register your attendance by Tuesday 29th September.

Location: LC1-016, Languages Building

For our second seminar, on the 28th October at 12pm, we welcome Dr Elsa Boulet (Universté de Rouen) and Dr Mathilde Julla-Marcy (Nantes Université):

Despite the removal of legal barriers to women’s entry into higher education, and despite the increasing proportion of women amongst students, women remain under-represented among faculty, in particular in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Drawing on the case of academic medicine in France, we explore the formal and informal processes through which gender inequalities in training and career are reproduced. The persistence of the glass ceiling in academic medicine in France is remarkable given the feminization of French medical training over the last 50 years. Women now represent 64% of medical students and 54% of hospital doctors, but only 49% of junior faculty staff (maître de conférences), and 20% of senior faculty staff (professeur). We contend that the higher positions of academic medicine constitute a gendered elite in two senses. First, a series of obstacles throughout the training leads to the exclusion of women and therefore to the over-representation of men in these positions. Second, academic medicine constitutes a “gendered organization” (J. Acker) in which both men and women have to behave as a “disembodied worker […] whose life centers on his full-time […] while his wife or another woman takes care of his [or her] personal needs and his [or here] children” (Acker, 1990, p.151).

Please register by Monday, 26 October, so that catering can be arranged. 

Participants: Katla Thorhildardottir, Women’s Collective of Ireland, Laura McMorrow, founder of Kilcornan Market Garden, 

As part of the celebrations of the UN Year of Farming Women 2026, this roundtable brings together rural women, community organisations, entrepreneurs, researchers, students, and university staff to explore gender equality in agriculture, rural entrepreneurship, leadership, community development, and the role of higher education in supporting rural communities. Supported by the University of Limerick's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Unit, the roundtable aims to create a space for mutual learning where academic knowledge and lived experience come together. The discussion will focus on the opportunities and challenges facing women in farming and rural enterprise, the supports available to women in rural areas, and the ways in which higher education institutions can contribute to more inclusive and sustainable rural futures.

Panel Speakers: 

Katla Thorhildardottir, Development Worker, Women's Collective Ireland (WCI) Limerick

Katla will discuss the supports available to women in farming and agriculture in County Limerick, including funding opportunities, business start-up supports, networking initiatives, training programmes, and pathways back into education and leadership.

Laura McMorrow, Founder, Kilcornan Market Garden

Laura is a rural entrepreneur and horticultural producer who founded a sustainable market garden enterprise in County Limerick. She will share her experience of developing her own brand, building a successful local business, and promoting environmentally sustainable food production.

Dr Mary Curtin, Assistant Professor, Department of Accounting and Finance, Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick

Dr Curtin's research focuses on gender, farming, land ownership, rural development, sustainability, and the future of Irish agriculture. She will bring an academic perspective on the structural opportunities and challenges facing women in farming and rural communities.

This event forms part of the I International SEMILLA Congress, "Weaving the Land: Knowledge and Ruralities from an Intersectional Perspective", a hybrid and multi-site international congress organised within the framework of the SEMILLA (Knowledge, Empowerment, Women, Local Identity, Leadership and Autonomy) research project. Bringing together participants from Spain, Ireland, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and the United States.

The discussion will focus on entrepreneurship, community engagement, leadership, local development and the importance of community networks in rural areas, drawing on themes explored through the SEMILLA project. The objective is to create a space where rural women can share their experiences, challenges and successes while contributing to broader conversations around gender equality, empowerment and social participation. This activity corresponds to one of the roundtables officially included in the SEMILLA Congress programme.

Details are to be confirmed and will be added closer to the event. 

Details are to be confirmed and will be added closer to the event.