Sara Ahmed will be giving a public lecture at UOW on the 25th of October. The lecture is titled ‘Complaint as Diversity Work’ and will be of great interest to emotions researchers as well as those of us interested in topics such as gender, race and inequality. You can register for the event here. The event is co-sponsored by FRN, Contemporary Emotions Research Network (CERN) and Provocations.

The lecture explores how complaint can be understood as a form of diversity work, as what you have to do in order to make institutions more accommodating. Drawing on interviews with staff and students who have made complaints within universities (including complaints about racism, sexism, sexual harassment, and bullying) the lecture addresses the difficulty of making complaints and asks how and why complaints are often blocked. It explores how we learn about power from those who challenge power.

The CERN reading group will be hosting several meetings on Ahmed’s work in the weeks leading up to the event, and HDR students who attend these meetings will have the opportunity to meet with Ahmed in a special postgrad Q&A session. If you would like to participate in the reading group/Q&A, please email Jordan McKenzie (jordanmc@uow.edu.au) to register your interest. 

Sara Ahmed is the author of 10 books including: Living a Feminist Life (2017), The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2014), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), and The Promise of Happiness (2010). Up until the end of 2016, Sara was Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London and prior to that she was based in Women’s Studies at Lancaster University.