UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 01 MARCH 2023
Birmingham City University is delighted to announce the full programme for xCHANGE Festival 2023, an annual celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month.
The festival, which has taken place each year at BCU since 2019 and is curated by BCU’s Dr Kate Carruthers Thomas, champions women’s contributions to history, culture and society. It also provides an opportunity to showcase the breadth of research taking place across the University’s faculties - and to highlight the lived experiences of women in a variety of contexts.
Dr Kate Carruthers Thomas, Senior Research Fellow and Athena SWAN Project Manager at BCU, said: “International Women’s Day is a global event both celebrating women’s achievements and marking a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. High profile, one-off events raise temporary visibility of both, but in founding the xCHANGE festival in 2019, one of my intentions was to highlight the work that women do within and outside BCU every day of the year.
“I wanted the festival to reflect women’s research, women’s networks and communities and to create a platform for everyone at BCU to hear about women’s lived experiences, ideas and expertise.
“This year’s festival programme fulfils that intention, highlighting PoWER – BCU’s Programme for Women Achieving Excellence in Research, the new BCU Women in Higher Education Network, the Race, Equity and Inclusion Steering Group and the WRITING ROOM initiative supporting female academics’ writing.
“There is also a focus on experiences of menstruation, menopause, breast cancer and endometriosis. These are not just ‘women’s business’ they impact on relationships, families, communities and workplaces.”
Knowledge xCHANGE, a new strand for this year’s festival, features Dr Annalise Weckesser, co-founder and lead of the International Endometriosis Social Research Network and of BCU’s Family, Health and Gender Research Cluster. Annalise draws on her research into endometriosis to consider what women’s experience of this condition tells us about health inequalities.
Access to healthcare and the place of women’s health in policy and practice are topics also addressed by BCU academic Dr Emma Craddock, guest presenter for the BCU Women in Higher Education Network drop in event. Emma will present the findings of her research with the Women’s Health Network in Bradford.
Knowledge xCHANGE will also feature the University of Aberdeen’s Clare Matysova, who questions why Shared Parental Leave - with its potential to reduce the impact of maternity leave on women’s career progression and create greater opportunities for fathers to engage with their children - has such low take-up. She challenges universities to create a more visible approach to supporting shared parenting and promote a positive culture around family-related career breaks.
Colleagues in BCU Library and Learning Resources have been keen supporters of xCHANGE since its inception. This year as in previous years, they have curated book displays in Curzon and Seacole Libraries and updated the International Women’s Day xCHANGE Festival Collection and Reading List throughout the month.
You can view the full programme here.