For this one-day virtual conference, delegates will be able to view presentations and submit questions for discussion in advance, allowing asynchronous engagement for the convenience of those with other commitments, or from other time zones, that might make a synchronous event difficult. On the day of the conference there will be the opportunity for live discussion with speakers, networking and socialising.

A draft programme is included below, though this is subject to change.

We hope you will join us for an event that promises to be inspiring, dealing with important subject matter through an experimental format.

Event image is taken from the Wellcome Trust: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/M0008374.html

Organiser: Dr Anna McFarlane (anna.mcfarlane@glasgow.ac.uk, @mariettarosetta)

Keynotes:

Dr Anne Whitehead: '"Your tiny white vests, unworn": Contemporary elegies of maternal loss

Dr Ria Cheyne (@riacheyne): Representation, Disability, Disclosure: Uncertain Explorations

Panel 1: Wombs

Transparent Wombs, Holy (Mis)conceptions – Representations of “Foetus-Type” Visitation and Women’s Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany, Wiktoria Muryn (University of Glasgow)

Women As Sites: The Dichotomies of Family Planning on the ‘Female’ Body, Aprajita Sarcar (Queens University, Ontario)

Panel 2: Psychosomatics

Have you tried relaxing?: the experience and treatment of vaginismus as a contested and neglected condition, Georgia Haire (University of Kent)

‘It’s all in your head.’ Medicine’s dismissal of women living with vulvodynia, Mary J. Lockwood (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Veronica Rodriguez (University of Reading) Representing Endometriosis: Thoughts on My Sick Body and Spectatorship

Panel 3: Women’s Health and Speculative Fiction

Climate Change and Pregnancy in Naomi Booth’s Sealed and Marian Womack’s Lost Objects, Jonathan Thornton (University of Liverpool)

Imagining Abortion: Foetal Personhood and Leni Zumas’ Red Clocks (2018), Jo Rodgers (University of Leeds)

Title TBC, Beata Gubacsi (University of Liverpool)

Panel 4: Contemporary Women’s Health in the UK and Ireland

“Making History”: The Temporal Politics of Pro-Choice Activism in Post-Repeal Ireland, Leah Eades (University of Edinburgh)

“The first thing that I noticed when I got clean was that life hurts”: Women and Ageing in Recovery, April Shaw (University of Glasgow)

Reproductive health and fertility services experiences for lesbian women, bi+ women, trans men, and non-binary people in Scotland, Dr Rebecca Crowther (Equality Network, Scotland)

Law’s Patriarchy: Reading Narratives of Privilege in the UK’s Abortion Regimes, Lynsey Mitchell (Abertay University)

Panel 5: Creative Contributions

The [dis]appearance of hysteria, Professor Laura González (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland)

Live on Zoom: Rachel Bower (University of Leeds), ‘Writing the Maternal: Poems and Reflections’

Laura Donald (University of Glasgow), Heart Failure and Motherhood

Panel 6:

(In)visible women: re-representing the woman in the body, a transmedia experience from Sushila Chowdhry (University of Edinburgh) and Maya Chowdhry (Artist). See online event page for invitation details.