Past Speakers

Dr. Rebecca Ranz

Dr. Rebecca Ranz is a Senior Lecturer at Sapir College. She is the International Programs Coordinator of the Social Work School. Her main areas of research are: Religion, Spirituality & Social work in addition to International Social work.

Dr. Merav Moshe-Grodofsky  

Dr. Merav Moshe-Grodofsky is a senior faculty member at the School of Social Work, Sapir Academic College, Israel. She teaches, practices, writes and conducts research on human rights practice, community organizing, and the combination of the two as a method to promote peace building among disadvantaged and multicultural groups within societies and between societies in conflict.

Dr. Cathy Raymond

Cathy Raymond has a doctorate in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education and master’s degrees in Germanic Studies and Applied Linguistics/TESOL. She is an independent researcher, and her research areas focus on social justice, postcolonial feminism and decolonial research approaches, translanguaging, narrative inquiry, and personal narrative. She is a former Fulbright Scholar and Fulbright Researcher and has lived and worked in the USA, Germany, Russia, Nepal, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

Prof. Dr. Molly C. O’Donnell  

Molly C. O’Donnell, PhD, is an instructor in English and WGSS at James Madison University. She was the recipient of the Joan Leach Memorial Essay Prize (2016) and has recently published a co-edited volume, The Microgenre (Bloomsbury, 2020), that takes a multidisciplinary approach to niche culture. Her current research examines the important intersection of pedagogy and practice.

Dr. Hama Abu-Kishk

Hama Abu-Kishk, PhD is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Communications at Sapir Academic College. In her postdoctoral research Hama investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on underrserved students in the Israeli higher education system. She has served as head of a technological entrepreneurship program, mentoring students and teachers in leading innovation and entrepreneurship in education. Her research interests include: digital divide, digital learning, new media and digital activism.

Dr. Allassad Alhuzail  

Dr. Allassad Alhuzail, senior Lecturer, School of Social Work, Sapir Academic College, Israel. Her research deals with the implications of social change for the lives of three generations of Bedouin women; Poverty; youth at risk; Indigenous social work and social work in conflict areas; women in traditional, and religious societies.

Dr. Annecka Leolyn Lovell Marshall

Annecka Marshall is a lecturer at The Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the Mona Campus in Jamaica, University of the West Indies. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Warwick. Her research, publications, lecturing, advocacy and activism examine Black feminism, Pan-Africanism and the power dynamics that regulate sexualities. She analyses the socio-economic and political oppression of racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity and poverty in order to develop strategies that promote personal empowerment, human rights and social change in Africa and the Diaspora.

Dr. Guðrún Sif Friðriksdóttr

Gudrun Sif Fridriksdottir is a researcher and project manager at RIKK – Institute of Gender, Equality and Difference at the University of Iceland. Gudrun has a PhD in Social Anthropology and for the past 15 years her work has focused on the various forms of interlinkages between gender and violence, both academically and through project management.

Ms. Roberta Maria Aricò

Roberta Maria Aricò is an honours student in Political Science at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and a master’s student in International Relations at the University of Florence. Her background combines legal and theoretical perspectives, focusing on human rights and gender studies. Her main interests concern GBV against migrant women and States’ response in terms of protection and reintegration

Mrs. Sana Sayed 

Sana Sayed  has an M.A. degree in English Literature from California State University, Fullerton, and a B.A. degree in English Literature and a minor in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Irvine. She is a Senior Instructor in the Department of English at the American University of Sharjah. Her research interests are theories of assessment and accountability in composition courses, women and politics, and gender and identity. Her most recent chapter publication appeared in Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring (2020) published by NYU Press.

Mrs. Weronika Kaminska

This year’s Fulbright scholarship holder at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, PhD student at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Gdansk. In 2019/2020, she was also a scholarship holder of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation. She conducts research in the field of medical sociology and the sociology of death, especially in the context of hospice and oncological care.

Ms. Gloria Nyambura Kenyatta

Ms. Gloria Nyambura Kenyatta is a Kenyan Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and a research fellow at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg, Germany- a research institute working on socio-political issues in the Global South including Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. She is also the Deputy Clerk of Bomet County Assembly, a devolved legislature in Kenya.  She holds a Master’s degree in Rural Sociology and Community Development from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies- Community Development from Kenyatta University, Kenya. Her areas of interest include; gender equality, citizen engagement, political participation, devolved governance, public policy, and community development.

Mrs. Quratulain Shah

Quratulain is a graduate of Aga Khan University- Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, UK where she received her master’s degree in Muslim Cultures. She is currently working with Rozan, an NGO that works with vulnerable people to promote emotional and mental health for a gender-just and violence-free society. Quratulain’s work mostly revolves around research and advocacy on gender, promoting peace and social cohesion, and media for development. She is also a recipient of the Global-Ugrad scholarship funded by the US Department of State.

Ms. Mel Rose Aguilar Maestro

Mel Rose Aguilar Maestro is a visual artist, award-winning filmmaker, media and women studies lecturer and researcher, and entrepreneur. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Media Studies major in Film from the University of the Philippines and is currently completing her PhD in Development Studies in the same university. Her research interests are focused on Women and Gender in South East Asian Media and the Arts, and progressive child rearing practices for the creation of development policies.

Ms. Kimberly Fillion

Now in her thirteenth year as a high school religious studies teacher, Fillion’s professional passions parallel her current PhD work, which explores how to broaden the sphere of religious methodologies by assessing the Catholic church and ascertaining the religious practices that sustain and (dis)empower women within those communities.