We would like to extend to you an invitation to contribute and attend the Challenging gender; Normalisation and beyond conference to be held at Mid Sweden University in 13-14th September 2011.

The conference hosts a mixture of researchers from different academic disciplines and seeks to explore the complexity of normalisation and its political implications in relation to gender, race/ethnicity, age/generation and class. During the last decades the view on normalisation as unproblematic in its aim of inclusiveness has been challenged both by activists and theorists who have pointed to the fact that all normalisation processes also depend on and produce exclusions and deviations. Looking to encourage innovative trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines that struggle to understand what it means for people, the world over, to forge gender identities in national, social and cultural contexts.

The conference will consist of presentations and discussions by world leading scholars from different disciplines: Professor Philomena Essed, Professor Bob Pease, Ph. D.Sarah Neal, Professor Gabriele Griffin and Professor Bronwyn Davies. The second day will be dedicated to paper presentations and exploring collaborative research opportunities.

We hereby invite papers and presentations regarding how to challenge gender normalisation on any of the following themes:

Gender, race/ethnicity and class
School health promotion and gender based violence
Challenging girlhood

Timetable: Abstracts, limited to 200 words including full name, institution, and the author(s) contacts, should be sent by April 30th, 2011 to the following e-mail address: katarina.giritli-nygren@miun.se Notification of acceptance will be announced by May 31th. There will be a limit of 40 papers/ participants.