PECANS Committee
One of the objectives of the CentreLGS PECANS International Workshops and Network Development Programme is to set up a PECANS Committee, which is responsible for the management PECANS activities, and developing PECANS into the future.
The responsibilities of the committee include:
- Organising the PECANS international workshops
- Deciding on visiting fellowship applications
- Developing the PECANS network
- Redeveloping the PECANS website
Meet the PECANS Committee:
Donatella Alessandrini (University of Kent) PECANS Associate Co-ordinator: Donatella is a lecturer at Kent Law School. She obtained her PhD at Birkbeck College, School of Law, where her doctoral project explored the development approaches of the post-war international trading regime. Her research interests are in the areas of development studies, feminist international political economy, globalisation, trade theories and practices and social movements. She is currently exploring the relationship between the regulation of agricultural biotechnology, neo-liberal policies and development discourses. Another project looks at the challenges to the current international financial architecture made by the Latin American countries experimenting with the ‘Socialism of the 21st Century’. Email: d.alessandrini@kent.ac.uk
Wei Wei Cao (Keele University): Wei Wei received her LLB from the law school in Hunan University which is located in Central southern China. After a six-month internship in a local civil court, she came to the School of Law, Keele University in 2006 and completed an LLM in Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights in 2007. She is currently working on a PhD project in the Institute of Law, Politics and Justice, Keele university. Her research aims to examine how law can promote women’s reproductive autonomy. Specifically, she uses a comparative study between the English and the Chinese abortion law and policy to demonstrate that pregnant women’s agency is not treated with respect in the two jurisdictions. Email: w.w.cao@ilpj.keele.ac.uk
Sameena Dalwai (Keele University): Sameena is currently working on her phd on 'Ban on Bar Dancing in Mumbai: A case study in Law, Gender, Sexuality' at Keele University. She has been a Human Rights lawyer and a feminist activist before joining academia, and has co-written a “Training Guidebook on Communalism and the Law”. She is a director of Development and Human Rights Institute (DHRI), a summer school and internship programme that is run annually in India for students interested in human rights education and exposure. Email: s.dalwai@ilpj.keele.ac.uk
Stacy Douglas (University of Kent): Stacy is researching the relationship between the cultural practices of embodied memorializing at the British Museum and the law. Her doctoral thesis, titled "Memory, Ritual, and Colonial Mythos: Sustaining Legal Imperialism at the British Museum," is an interdisciplinary analysis drawing on the fields of socio-legal studies, cultural anthropology, and postcolonial theory. This project is supervised by Dr. Stewart Motha and Dr. Donatella Alessandrini. Stacy holds a BA Honours degree in Women's Studies and Environmental Studies from York University (Canada), and an MA in Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies from Trent University (Canada). Email: s.m.douglas@kent.ac.uk
Rosie Harding (Keele University) PECANS Co-ordinator: Rosie is a lecturer in law at Keele University. She obtained her PhD at the University of Kent. Rosie's research explores the place of law in everyday life with a particular focus on legal consciousness studies, resistance and lesbian and gay equality struggles. Her primary interests are in discrimination law and family law, particularly the regulation and recognition of caring and intimate relationships. Her broader research interests are in the gender, sexuality and law field, and also include human rights, labour law and the intersection of law and psychology. Email: r.harding@law.keele.ac.uk.
Adam Jowett (Aston University): Adam is a postgraduate research student in the psychology department at Aston University, Birmingham. Adam has been involved as a research assistant in a British Academy funded study about the impact of the Civil Partnership Act on same-sex couples since their introduction in 2005 (led by Dr Elizabeth Peel and Dr Victoria Clarke). He has also conducted an analysis of media representations of Civil Partnership within UK newspapers. His current doctoral research focuses on intersections of sexuality and health (more specifically LGBTQ experiences of chronic illness). Email: jowettaj@aston.ac.uk.
Sarah Keenan (University of Kent): Sarah is a PhD student and teaching assistant at the University of Kent. Before coming to study in Britain Sarah completed a BA/LLB at the Australian National University in Canberra and worked as a Judge's associate in the Supreme Court of Queensland and a casework solicitor for the Prisoners' Legal Service in Brisbane. Her research is on spaces of belonging, uses methodologies from legal geography and critical theory to re-think socio-legal issues usually framed in terms of identity politics. She also teaches property law. Email: s.j.keenan@kent.ac.uk
Ana Porroche (University of Sussex): Ana Porroche Escudero is currently finishing her PhD thesis in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. Her work focuses on intersections between cultural notions of health, illness, gender and the social construction of women's bodies and how this shapes Spanish women's experiences of breast cancer, for which she was awarded a Fundación Caja Madrid grant (2007-08). At Sussex she undertakes undergraduate seminar teaching at the Institute of Development Studies. Together with Qvintvs Teatrae, Ana also convenes the Love your Body workshops in her community (Quinto, Spain) as a part of the international benefic campaign VDay to end gender violence. Before coming to Sussex she did an MA in Women´s Studies (Social Research) at The University of York (2006). Email: a.porroche-escudero@sussex.ac.uk.