Women’s Leadership Series Fall 2017 

October 16, 2017

Georgia Southern University’s Women’s and Gender Studies, is pleased to announce Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., will be featured guest speaker at the Women’s Leadership Series Roundtable Discussion on Monday, Oct. 16. The roundtable will take place in the College of Education Building, room 2148.  Dr. Shiva will speak on Women’s Leadership, Democracy, Diverse Cultures, and Creative Leadership. Anyone interested in attending should contact Janina Jones at janinajones@georgiasoutehrn.edu

Dr. Shiva trained as a Physicist at the University of Punjab, and completed her Ph.D. on the ‘Hidden Variables and Non-locality in the quantum Theory’ form the University of Western Ontario, Canada.  After several years of working she shifted to an inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India.

Shiva is a woman whose work is focused on embracing not only the principles of feminism, but also the principles of ecology.  In fact, as an ecofeminist, she sees these two movements as interconnected and believes that the worldview that causes environmental degradation and injustice is the same worldview that causes a culture of male domination, exploitation, and inequality for women.  Shiva titles her feminist theory “political,” or “subsistence” ecofeminism, to differentiate it from the more spiritually focused ecofeminism popular in Western countries (although, since the WTO protests of 1999 and the events of September 11, 2001, Western ecofeminism has become equally politically aware).   Both her activism and theory has had a global and concrete focus.  Her work has dealt with “third world” women, whose lives are adversely affected by the forces of corporate globalization and colonialism.

Shiva’s visit to Georgia Southern is as a part of the Sustainability Seminar series to take place at 7 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center, and is supported by the Center for Sustainability, First Year Experience, Multicultural Student Center, Women’s and Genders Studies Program and International Programs and Services.