What Do You Mean you Study Childlessness?
Storyhouse Childless
Event details
Research, Activism, and Lived Experiences
Hear from a panel of leading expert researchers and activists.
In this panel, Dawn Llewellyn will be asking Gayle Letherby, Cristina Archetti, and Monique Moultrie about their work, their motivations, inspirations, and why – despite the development of childlessness studies – it can be a tricky topic to pursue, especially as childless/childfree women researchers and activists.
This is set to be an engaging discussion featuring some of the leading, international voices whose work has not only forged new conversations in the academy but challenged pronatalism, socially.
Members: £4.50
Non-members: £5
Included in the Childless Weekend Pass (£35)
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About the Panel
Dawn Llewellyn She/Her
Dawn is an Associate Professor of Religion and Gender at the University of Chester. She’s been researching, publishing, and speaking publicly about pronatalism for over 12 years and her current book project examines how Christian women understand and manage their reproductive agency and choice. Dawn co-founded the festival in 2019. Although labels are tricky things, she usually moves between childless by choice/childfree/not a parent/Dawn.
Gayle Letherby She/Her
Gayle is a feminist sociologist, a visiting professor at various UK universities and a freelance academic specialising in creative practices with respect to the collection and presentation of research. Following, an auto/biographical PhD (completed in 1997) on experiences of infertility and involuntary childlessness Gayle has continued to reflect and to write (including memoir and fiction) on the status and experience of non / motherhood/ing.
Dr. Monique Moultrie she/her
Monique is Professor of Religious Studies, Africana Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University. She is a womanist (Black feminist) ethicist who is currently researching Black childfree women and faith as a part of a project on reproductive justice and religion. She is honored that her research allows her to talk with women about their sexual decision-making and is thrilled to have found her other unicorns in the childfree Black women of faith community.
Cristina Archetti She/Her/It/its
Cristina is Professor of Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Oslo, Norway. Engaged in research and activism around involuntary childlessness for nearly a decade, she wrote about the existential and social/political repercussions of not having children in Childlessness in the Age of Communication: Deconstructing Silence (2020). She is also psychotherapist and currently working on a new book, The trauma of infertility: Understanding the experience of involuntary childlessness.