SURCLA and AILASA Roundtable: Reflections on Decolonial Feminisms

The Sydney University Research Community for Latin America (SURCLA), in collaboration with the Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA), are proud to present a roundtable discussion reflecting upon forms of decolonial feminism in Latin America as well as discussing the work carried about by organisations in the field.

The symposium will be held remotely on Zoom on Saturday 25 September, 9am (AEST Sydney time).

Chaired by the University of Sydney’s own Dr Fernanda Peñaloza the event will feature a live conversation with Dr Sara Motta from the University of Newcastle and Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro from Deakin University, as well as the distinguished guest speaker Mirna Rosa Herrera one of the founders and current leaders of the Red de Mujeres Matamba y Guasá in Timbiquí, Colombia. Each will discuss their own experiences as researchers and activists addressing a series of pressing questions related to decolonial feminisms and afrofeminism.

The event will be conducted in both Spanish and English, and is open to all members of the general public. It is aimed to shed light on the importance of grassroots community organisations, particularly in advocating for disenfranchised and vulnerable members of the population in Colombia during this time of both global and national crises as well as to develop closer connections between Australia and Latin America.

Following the difficult year that was 2020 and considering the various lockdowns that have occurred across Australia in recent weeks and months, such an event is also particularly important for many researchers into Latin America to stay connected with movements on the ground and it is hoped that such an event will further allow for the maintenance of professional and academic relationships across different universities and disciplines.

About the speakers

Mirna Rosa Herrera Vente is a social leader, educator and human rights defender from Timbiquí, Cauca, Colombia. She is a social science graduate specialising in environmental education and a PhD candidate in gender and equality (CEPISP, Mexico). Mirna is part of internationally and nationally recognised communitarian organising processes including: the Association ‘Apoyo a la Mujer’, the Network ‘Matamaba y Guasá’, the Juntanza de Mujeres Negras, the gastronomic project ‘Raíces de Tierra y Mar’, the non-government organisation ‘Así Soñamos la Tierra’ and the national platform ‘Trenzadas Somos Más’.

Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro is researcher, writer and educator currently employed as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute of Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Her research focuses on the intersections between decolonial feminisms, anti-racism, memory and rurality. She has undertaken participatory arts-based projects in Australia and Colombia with rural communities, artists, scholars and activists. Laura’s book with Palgrave Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place: Sentipensando with Rural Women in Colombia (2021) explores how rural women enact and imagine decolonial feminist worlds.

Dr Sara C. Motta is a proud Mestiza-salvaje of Colombia-Chibcha/Muisca, Eastern European Jewish and Celtic linages currently living, loving and resisting on the unceded lands of the Awabakal and Worimi peoples. She is mother, survivor of state and intimate violences, poet, political theorist, popular educator, and Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle, NSW. Sara has worked for over two decades with raced and feminised communities in struggle resistances/re-existencias in, against and beyond heteronormative capitalist-coloniality in the UK,  Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela and more recently Australia. She has co-created numerous projects of radical healing and community wellbeing in resistance to the colonial-patriarchal state and its juridical violent containments and published widely in academic and activist-community outlets. Her latest book (2018) Liminal Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation (Rowman and Littlefield) winner of the 2020 best Gender Theory and Feminist Book, International Studies Associate (ISA).

Dr Fernanda Peñaloza is an Argentine-Peruvian Latin Americanist Mestiza woman with Aymara, Italian and Spanish ancestry and Australian citizenship. She is an educator, a researcher, a diversity and inclusion advocate and facilitator. Fernanda joined the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Sydney after eight years studying and working in the UK. Interdisciplinary in nature, her work is primarily concerned with how knowledge production, and political, economic and cultural forces shape the way in which the peoples of Latin America and the region itself—both as a signifier and as a geopolitical location—are discursively constructed. In the past few years, the majority of her publications focus on Latin American cultures, and their interconnections with Australia. Her latest book is Penaloza, F., Walsh, S. (2019). Mapping South-South Connections: Australia and Latin America (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan).

Register now

RSVP via our registration form to receive the Zoom link. Registrations close Friday 24 September 2021 (AEST).

For more information, contact: Fernando Bayer – fernando.bayer@sydney.edu.au