Please click on the "read more" link below for information about panelists, faculty respondents, and special session presenters.  For information about our keynote speakers, please visit the links below.

Sciences keynote speaker Tanya Furman

Humanities keynote speaker Layli Phillips

Group Bio:

Claire Carter, Vicki Hallett, Diana Gibaldi, and May Friedman met as graduate students at York University where several of the group are still engaged in doctoral work.  As a community, this group has written and published extensively in a variety of fields.  Concurrent with their research work, the panel collectively participates in ongoing community building.  The similarities and disparities between the panellists’ ongoing research provide endless fodder for stimulating and transformative dialogue. 

Individual Bios:

Laura A. Abdi received her baccalaureate degree in Geological Sciences from SUNY at Buffalo in May 2007. During her undergraduate years, she worked under several professors in UB's Department of Geology as a Research Assistant in the fields of structural geology, geophysics, and surficial processes/hydrogeology. Laura ascertained a position at Leader Professional Services, Inc., an environmental, engineering, and safety consulting firm with offices across the eastern United States. As Environmental and Safety Specialist she has dual responsibilities; one of them is being Project Geologist for local and regional environmental projects. She became a Safety Specialist by completing a 3-week rigorous training program to become possibly one of the first female certified Fall & Rescue Procedures trainers of her kind. This training included specialized climbing and rescue-at-heights equipment designed for use in wind turbines, suspension trauma awareness/treatment, and fall/rescue-specific course design. She is also a certified First Aid & CPR instructor, and tailors her classes to the particular work environments wind turbine technicians encounter. She is a freelance writer, and volunteers for the Buffalo Museum of Science as a special presenter for scientific topics. When she is not traveling on business, she enjoys rock climbing and hiking with her husband.

Claudia Anguiano originally obtained her B.A in Communication Studies with a minor in Political Science from California State University of Los Angeles in 2004. She continued to pursue rhetorical
studies while working toward her M.A. at CSULA. Claudia graduated in 2006, having received the Special Recognition in Graduate Studies Award. Before beginning her doctoral studies, Claudia taught multiple communication classes as adjunct instructor at several community colleges in Southern California. She was also an instructor for a nonprofit organization committed to helping underprivileged students attend higher education.

Claudia Anguiano is currently first year doctoral student and instructor at the University of New Mexico’s Department of Communication and Journalism. Her concentration is in Intercultural Communication where her research interests revolved around the issue of border theory/experience within the context of U.S/Mexico immigration. She hopes to continue to use a critical lens to look at issues revolving race, gender and border identities. Building on her personal experience as a Mexican immigrant, she hopes to utilize her research interests in a way that will bring about positive social change.

Susannah Bartlow is a Ph. D. candidate in the Department of English and the Graduate Assistant for the Gender Institute at the University at Buffalo.  A native of the Philadelphia area, she works on embodiment and community strengthening in herself, the Gender Institute, and the Buffalo area.  Her dissertation “Vulnerability as Armor” explores the relationship between physical and spiritual healing and political action in the works of Toni Cade Bambara, Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde.  She has presented papers and chaired panels on a variety of feminist literatures, hip-hop subversiveness, and nonacademic careers at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture Association, the Northeast Modern Language Association, the Gender Institute’s works in progress series, and the 2006 Gender Across Borders conference.  She is also freelance editor and writer and a big fan of the arts.

Jane Bassatt-Winchell received her Bachelors from the University at Buffalo in Social Sciences Interdisciplinary with a concentration in Legal Studies with a minor in Women’s Studies. She will be graduating from the University of Buffalo in May 2008 with my Masters in Social Work. I have always had an interest in gender/ women’s studies and hope to continue with this passion in my career post graduation.

Laina Bay-Cheng

Glenna Bett

Dara Biltekoff 

Barbara Bono

Joanna Boron

Claire Carter:  see group bio

Percyslage Chigora is a lecturer of Political Science, International Relations and Development in the Department of History and Development Studies, Midlands State University, Private Bag 9055,Gweru, Zimbabwe.

Shelby L. Crosby

Tishana Daniel

Michael Duffey 

Rebecca K. Eliseo-Arras is a master’s student at the University at Buffalo School of Social Work. She also holds a BA in Psychology and Political Science from the University at Buffalo. She is interested in research and practice related to sexuality, sexual assault, eating disorders, self-injury and the intersection of those issues.

Nicole Fava received her Bachelor's Degree from Bowdoin College in Psychology and English in 2003. She is a graduate student in the Masters of Social Work program at UB. She is in her second year, and is currently a research assistant with Dr. Laina Bay-Cheng and Sue Green of the social work department working on the Sexual Life History Calendar Project and a collaborative project with the Center for Development of Human Services regarding trauma in the child welfare system respectively. In addition, Nicole is a research assistant for Dr. Craig Colder of the Clinical Psychology Department at UB on the Adolescent and Family Development project, as well as a graduate assistant working with Dean Nancy Smyth. Nicole's interests lie in the overlap and intersections of gender, sexuality and trauma. Of particular interest are the ways in which the confines of a silent discourse on sexuality and the tendency to view trauma only through explicit behaviors of children and adolescents limit healthy development.

Nicky Fox

May Friedman:  see group bio

Joseph A. Gardella, Jr. is Professor of Chemistry at SUNY Buffalo, where he has been since 1982.  Joe is an analytical chemist in the College of Arts and Sciences who specializes in the application of novel techniques to the characterization of biosurfaces to foster tissue regeneration and wound-healing after serious injury.  He is a former Faculty Fellow in the UB Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth in the UB Regional Institute, where he pursued policy studies in regional science and environmental policy and public participation. He currently serves as the director of The University at Buffalo-Buffalo Public Schools Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership.

Gardella was honored by the White House with a 2005 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. The annual award, administered by the NSF, honors individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to mentoring students and boosting the participation of minorities, women and disabled students in science, mathematics and engineering.  He was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2007) and the American Vacuum Society (2005), for his research accomplishments. He has been awarded the 72nd Jacob Schoellkopf Medal of the Western New York American Chemical Society (2002), the 2003 Ernest Lynton Award for Faculty Public Service, three SUNY Chancellor's Medals for Excellence in Teaching (1996), Faculty Service (2004) and Scholarly and Creative Work (2005), the National Science Foundation Award for Special Creativity (1991-1993) and has been a fellow of the Exxon Education Foundation (1989-91) and Lawrence M. Gelb Foundation (1986-89). He was the awarded the second Distinguished Chemistry Alumni Award at Oakland University in 1998.

He has a real life besides this stuff, which includes his wife, Carol Kizis, his daughter, Claire Seung Hee, and son, Joseph Jee Yoon. They all enjoy traveling, reading, gardening and other important pursuits which do not involve academic politics. They reside in North Buffalo, where they enjoy the weather.

Diana Gibaldi:  see group bio

Kimberly S. Girdlestone, JD, LMSW, is a Buffalo native currently pursuing a PhD. in Social Welfare here at UB.  Kimberly also obtained a JD/MSW in UB's dual degree program where she specialized in Special Education and Disability Law. In 1994,she earned BAs in Psychology and Women's Studies with a concentration on Women's Sexuality from UB as well. Kimberly has participated in community organizing and previously worked with the forensic mentally ill population. Her research and community interests include:  women's issues, mental health, and the criminal justice system. 

Abby Gondek is a second year M.A. student in Women's Studies at San Diego State University.  As a graduate teaching associate she creates and implements her own introductory Women’s Studies course and advises forty students each semester. She has presented at conferences and trainings throughout California and even at Emory University, on topics such as “Teen Dating Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention,” “Queering Prayer,” “Feminist Midrash,” “The Union of Cearense Women: Transforming Consciousness,” and “Young Women’s Sexual Relationships at Brandeis and in Northeast Brazil.” Her poetry and essays have been published in: Free Your Voice, a Brandeis Women's Publication; Laurel Moon, a Brandeis Literary Magazine; and My First Crush Came From Israel, My Prom Date Came From Botswana: Brandeis Students Write About Cross-Cultural Relationships.  Her research interests include U.S./Brazil cross-cultural studies relating to:  Black Jews (Afro-Brazilian Jews) and racial diversity within the Jewish Diaspora, Jewish/Black interracial relationships, Jewish and Black nationalisms, anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism, Jewish and Black feminisms, Jewish spirituality, and sexual coercion in relationships.

Tobias Guzura is a lecturer in the Department of Gender Studies at the Midlands State University, Gweru, Zimbabwe.

Vicki Hallett:  see group bio

Bingjun He

Zoe Hollomon

Dr. Tara Jabbaar-Gyambrah is a recent PhD graduate from the University
at Buffalo, State University of New York's American Studies program with
a concentration in Women's Studies. Her dissertation entitled "Hip-Hop,
Hip-Life:  Global Sistahs" argued that Black women in hip-hop in the
U.S. and hip-life in Ghana have been able to carve out their own space
in a male dominated industry using their music as a form of resistance
against multiple oppressions.  Her research interests include:
understanding the multiple and interdisciplinary ways in which African
women are represented in popular culture forms, resistance, the Ghanaian
socio-cultural history of hip-life music and black feminist theory.

Lori Johnson

Paola Kersch

Yeewan Koon is an Assistant Professor in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Hong Kong. Prior to my current position, I was a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a graduate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

My primary area of research is in early nineteenth century Guangdong art exploring themes such as women as a metaphoric other in paintings by Su Renshan, an eccentric 19 th century Cantonese artist. Additionally, I write reviews and conduct research on the local art scene in Hong Kong, looking particularly at issues of class and gender. Overall, my scholarly interest is investigating ways that dominant structures of knowledge are challenged or made malleable by the shifting and evolving relationship between artists, discourse and society.

Rachel Lewis is currently working towards the completion of a PhD dissertation in musicology with a graduate minor concentration in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University. Her dissertation, “Bordering on Desire: Music, Lesbian Migration, and Contemporary Independent Film”, explores the relationship between music, lesbian desire, and the experience of migration in contemporary European and U.S. independent film and documentary. The dissertation, which is intended in part as a corrective to the privileging of the politics of visual representation in lesbian film criticism and theory, takes music as a critical point of departure for thinking about how discourses of migration speak to the problematic of lesbian identity within a global, transnational frame. Rachel’s other research interests cover a wide range of topics in feminist and lesbian studies, from constructions of gender in seventeenth-century opera to women in the music video, and lesbian and gay historiography. She has published an article on Monteverdi’s opera L’Incoronazione di Poppea in the journal Music & Letters, and has an article on the lesbian composer and feminist suffragette leader, Ethel Smyth, that is forthcoming in the collection Sapphists: Sexologists, and Sexualities: Lesbian Histories II, ed. Mary McAuliffe and Sonja Tiernan (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008).

Marieme Lo

Kimberly A. Long is a graduate student in women's studies at San Diego State University. Besides teaching an introduction to women's studies course for the past two years, she works part-time at a domestic violence shelter. Her activism and research focus on personal narratives, the development of feminist consciousness, feminist pedagogy, women's history, and the connection between religion and women's agency. She graduated sum laude from the University of California, Irvine with a major in women's studies and a minor in religious studies.

Neelam Maheshwari is a PhD Candidate in the Global Gender Studies Department at the University at Buffalo.

Hilary Malatino is currently a Ph.D. Student in Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture (PIC) at Binghamton University, beginning work on a dissertation concerned broadly with this historically mutable relationship between medico-scientific research on sexual formation and the politico-discursive employment of these findings as foundation and bedrock within systems of gendered intelligibility, and specifically with those bodies and subjects figured as exceptional, aberrant, and monstrous within these systems of intelligibility-- particularly the intersexed and the colonized.  She has shared her work at Smith College and the National Women's Studies Association Annual Conference, among other sites, and is an instructor of Women's Studies and Comparative Literature. 

Natalie Miller is a Graduate Student at Ramapo College working on my second Masters in Liberal Studies. I am also a high school English teacher at West Morris Central High SChool in New Jersey. Having become fascinated with the role of women in society and society's repsonse to its development and progress, I have written a paper discussing the negative effects of colonization on women, particularly women of minority cultures.

Marlisa Moschella is currently a PhD candidate for the program in Social, Political, Ethical and Legal Philosophy (SPEL) at Binghamton University (SUNY). She received a Women's Studies Graduate Certificate and MA in Philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2007, and a MA in Ethics and Policy Studies from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2005. Her areas of research interest include Social and Political Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, Ethics, Critical Race Theory and Asian Philosophy.

Alexandra Murphy is a second year doctoral student at the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She also holds an M.Phil in Gender and Women's Studies (TCD) and a BA (hons) in Fine Art (UCE). Alexandra is currently employed as the Course Tutor for the M.Phil Programme at the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies (TCD) where she teaches modules
in 'Feminist Theories' and 'Gender, Feminism and Visual Culture'. Her research interests include: gender in visual culture; feminism, gender and conceptual art practice; the construction and politics of spectatorship and the subject; embodiment and visuality.  She has previously presented and published research on the representation of gender within images from Abu Ghraib prison, feminist analysis and visual methodologies, and feminist pedagogical practice.

Lucy Nicholas is a Sociology / Cultural Studies PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.  Having completed my MPhil on ‘Poststructuralist anarchist gender politics’ in Australia, my PhD work is concerned with anarcho-queer practices, and developing an ethics of practice that seeks to undermine or go beyond sexual difference.  In doing so I make use of gender theory, philosophy, social theory and field work.  I am also active in many international queer, feminist, zinester and anarchist communities and enjoy punk music! 

Amber O'Daniels

Ramona Olvera is a PhD candidate in Social Policy at The Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.  She is currently completing her dissertation entitled "Leave Your Family at Home:  Consequences for Women, Families, and Mexican Communities of a US Immigrant Guestworker Program".  She has a dual Master's Degree in Women and Gender Studies and Social Policy from Brandeis University.  Her research interests include issues of gender, immigration, work, and economic inequalities.  She currently resides in the Dominican Republic.

Kate Riehlman

Hope Russell

Salwan Abdul Sahib

Jennifer Sandoval is currently a PhD student and instructor in Intercultural Communication at the University of New Mexico.  Jennifer is a native Californian who most recently lived in Los Angeles after completing a master's in dispute resolution at Pepperdine University School of Law in 2003. She worked for the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution in numerous capacities and was involved in many projects, including the development of the Asian Dispute Resolution Studies program. Prior to beginning her Ph.D. program, Jennifer spent several years as an instructor in the communication division at Pepperdine's Seaver College where she taught courses in intercultural communication, conflict, international negotiation and interpersonal communication.  She continues an association with a small communication consulting firm based in the L.A. area and contributes to work in executive coaching and development of new training material and workshops. Jennifer's primary research interests include gender, culture and the body. Specifically, she looks at the influence of the Western, masculine, scientific paradigm and its influence on body perception and holistic health around the world.

Elizabeth Scarlett

Micaela Shapiro-Shellaby

Erin Sharkey

Allison Siehnel is a first-year graduate student in the University at Buffalo's Master's Program in Buffalo, NY.   She received her B.A. from Miami University (Oxford, OH) with a double major in both Literature and Journalism in 2006.  Her freelance work has been published in local papers in both western New York and southern Ohio.  Allison's undergraduate thesis focused on British Victorian fiction through a feminist film theory lens, and she is currently interested in nineteenth-century American literature. Her focus on minority and women's writing has guided her interest in the cultural implications that surround these works in their own time as well, as their role in shaping our attitudes today.  She wishes to continue researching on the role rhetorical strategy plays in confronting the ideology of dominant cultures.  Other activities include participating with the English Graduate Student Association and private tutoring for writing at the undergraduate and graduate level.  When not reading or writing, she enjoys winter sports and traveling. 

Maxine Seller 

Ashwini Tambe is Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies and History at the University of Toronto, St. George. Her research focuses on transnational feminist theory, colonial South Asia, sexuality studies, and global political  economy. Her upcoming book, Codes of Misconduct: The Regulation of  Prostitution in colonial Bombay (forthcoming U Minnesota Press) traces the  relationship between forms of prostitution, law making and law enforcement practices in colonial Bombay. She has also co-edited a volume on transnational subaltern mobility in colonial South Asia (Routledge 2008). Her current research focuses on the changing legal age standards defining girlhood in twentieth century India. Her work has been published in journals such as Feminist Studies, Gender and Society, and International Feminist Journal of Politics.

Margarita Vargas 

Rachel Verni is a second-year doctoral student in the Social-Personality Psychology program, with a Concentration in Women’s Studies, at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York.  Her research interests center on identity and, currently, her work focuses on “passing” as an identity-enactment strategy (e.g. lesbian/gay/queer individuals passing as heterosexual) and the ways in which it may reflect personal agency over one’s self-presentation and a resistance to stigmatization.  Rachel is looking forward to engaging in the dialogue planned for the Gender Across Borders III: Research Transformations Conference, which overlaps with issues of transformation and border-crossing enmeshed in passing.

Prof. Barbara Wejnert is Associate Professor and the Chair, and prior Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Global Gender Studies. Prior to her appointment at the University at Buffalo she was a faculty at Cornell University, Georgia Southern University, University of Florida and Mickiewicz University in Poznan. She received PhD in political sociology and MA in sociology of family and gender from Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She also pursued graduate studies at the University of Leiden, Netherlands.  

Prof. Wejnert’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the world-wide diffusion of democracy and globalization of market, and their effect on gender equality, women’s health and gender policies. For this work she received grants from the Open Society Institute—the Soros Foundation (in 2005-07, 2003, 1996-1998), Ford Foundation (1996), Kosciuszko Foundation (1996), International Research and Exchange Board (2001-2002), National Endowments for the Humanities (1996, 1993), the Life Course Institute at Cornell (1995) and others.

Prof. Wejnert is an internationally known scholar in her field and an award winning author of research papers. Her interdisciplinary research has been published in many leading peer reviewed journals. In addition to many published collaborative research, she is a sole author of publications in the American Sociological Review, the Annual Review of Sociology, the Marriage and Family Review, Journal of Consumer Policy, a monograph of the World Health Organization and others. She published two books Women in Post-Communism and Transition to Democracy in Eastern Europe and Russia. She has also created two research databases on Nations, Democracy and Development: 1800-1999 and its sub-set Gender, Democracy and Development 1970-2000,  encompassing 200 years’ worth of information relating to more than 120 political, economic and social science indicators of 177 countries. She is currently preparing the database for broad scientific distribution.           

Among her other current projects are preparations of two books on Diffusion of Democracy as well as Gender, Democracy and Development. She is also pursuing a rigorous field research program on gender policies, women’s well-being and health in democratizing Asian, Eastern European, and African countries. At University at Buffalo, she teaches courses on Contemporary Globalization, Quantitative Methods, Violence in Gendered World, and Gender and Society. 

Gail Willsky is Associate Professor of Biochemistry in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.  She received a BS degree in biophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and her Ph.D. from the microbiologydepartment of Tufts University in Boston. She spent 4 years at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoctoral fellow in thebiology department and a research associate in biochemistry. Willsky then moved to the biochemistry department at the State University of New York atBuffalo (UB)as an assistant professor and is currently an associate professor in that department.She has been a visiting scientist at the Laboratoire de Genetique, CNRS Strasbourg, France, and in the department of physiology at the University of SouthernCaliforniaSchool of Medicine.  Her research interests originally focused on biological cell membranes, first working on phosphate transport in E. coli and then the plasma membrane proton ATPase in S. cerevisiae.  While isolating vanadate-resistant mutants in yeast, she became fascinated with work showing that oral administration of vanadium salts alleviated symptoms of diabetes and switched her research focus to that area. She has pursued the insulin-enhancing mechanism of vanadium salts and complexes in cell culture, the STZ-induced diabetic rat, and human type 2 diabetic patients.  The National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the American Diabetes Association have funded the work in her laboratory. Willsky has lectured all around the world and published both research articles and book chapters in this area.  Willsky is interested in education and has mentored over 75 high school,undergraduate, medical school, or graduate students in her laboratory, while developingthe undergraduate program in biochemistry at UB. She also promotes women inscience and is on the Executive Committee of the Gender Institute at the
University at Buffalo and is the president of the Buffalo chapter of the Associationfor Womenin Science (AWIS). She has received a Special Achievement Award from the
Buffalo Area Engineering Awareness for Minorities group for her work in the Buffalo schools (in partnership with AWIS, the Women’s Pavilion Pan Am 2001, and Zonta
International), developing a career day program called “Imagine yourself as a scientist!” that is integrated into the middle school curriculum.

Hershini Young

Nicole Zeftel