Following great scholars on sexualities have accepted our invitation to hold a key-note lecture:
Sasha Roseneil (University College London)
... is a professor of sociology and the Dean of the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences at University College London (previously a professor of sociology at the University of Leeds and the University of Oslo). In her research and theoretical work, she is interested in how gender, sexuality, subjectivity, and intimate lives are changing as well as remaining unchanged because of collective or individual, often unconscious resistance. The societal macro-level is also of interest to her as she analyses the role of social movements and collective actions in social, cultural, and political change. Her keynote lecture will be titled Holding tight: The power of the couple-norm in contemporary intimate citizenship regimes.
Roman Kuhar (University in Ljubljana)
... is a professor of sociology at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), where he has been a director of the Department of Sociology and is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He has collaborated with the Slovenian Peace Institute as well as the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights. He is an author of many articles, studies, and monographies, among which he has co-authored with Alenka Švab The Unbearable Comfort of Privacy (Peace Institute, 2005); co-edited with Judith Takács the books Beyond The Pink Curtain: Everyday life of LGBT people in Eastern Europe (Peace Institute, 2007) and Doing Families: Gay and Lesbian Family Practices (Peace Institute, 2011); and, quite recently, he co-edited together with David Paternotte Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against equality (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017). His key-note lecture will be called Gender as a hidden radical plan.
Gabriel Bianchi (Slovak Academy of Sciences)
... has been conducting non-medical research in sexuality for almost 30 years within the Slovak Academy of Sciences with a team that is unique in Central-European environment (Bianchi, Lukšík/Popper). In numerous international cooperations and projects Gabriel Bianchi has explored issues of sexual violence, seduction, media presence of sexualities, issues of LGBTI and other related problems, including sexuality vs. politics. His significant contribution is also in the epistemology and methodology of research on sexualities, mainly the qualitative approach and Q-methodology.
The invited key-note (Postmodern intimacy – a Dionysian transmutation) will be a critical reflection of tje Dionysian transmutations of intimacy in the postmodern times. The presentation will be augmented by illustrations from current Slovak feminist poetry.
Lucie Jarkovská (Masaryk University in Brno)
... has a PhD in sociology and is a staff member at the Institute for Inclusive Education in the Faculty of Education, Masaryk University in Brno (Czechia). She previously worked at the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University and in its Gender Centre. For years, she has been engaged with the topics of gender-sensitive sex education and with sexuality and gender in the school environment and in education. She is the author of an ethnographic analysis of the reproduction of gender in the everyday life of a school-class (Gender před tabulí, 2016, SLON), and she is the co-author of books on gender in the context of the educational and work aspirations of 15-year-old teenagers (S genderem na trh, 2010, SLON) as well as on ethnic diversity in a school environment. She is also the author of essays and notes featured in the online magazine, A2larm.cz. Recently, she has devoted her interest to the forms and influences of the so-called anti-gender ideology movement in education within the Central and Eastern European region. Her keynote lecture will discuss this particular area.