Gender-Based Violence

Sara Afzali is an Iranian poet, journalist, photographer and visual artist based in Slovenia. The Iranian artist recently performed at the International Centre of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, where she paid tribute to her compatriots, the Iranian women in the struggle for freedom, by cutting off her hair.

Katja Čičigoj is a research fellow at the University of Paderborn, where she will complete her PhD in feminist philosophy. Her research interests are contemporary European philosophy and critical theory. She has been a visiting research fellow at CRMEP, Kingston University, London, at CPCT, Goldsmiths College, London, and at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Haifa. She has worked as a lecturer at the Chair of Practical Philosophy, University of Paderobrno and MA Dance Studies, AMEU. In 2019, she translated, co-edited and wrote a companion study for Shulamith Firestone’ s The Dialectics of Gender (/*cf. Publishers) and organised an international symposium on feminist utopias. She has co-organised and co-organised several seminars, reading circles, lectures and conferences on contemporary philosophy, critical theory and feminist thought in Giessen, London, Paderborn and Ljubljana. She has co-edited two issues of the journal Dialogues on feminist themes, and is currently co-editing a volume on feminist utopias of care and reproduction for the publishing house /*cf., a special issue of the academic journal Feminist Encounters on feminist techno-imaginaries, and is working on a scholarly edition of Dialectics of Gender in English.

Tjaša Črnigoj is a theatre director (AGRFT) and a philosopher and literary comparativist (UL Faculty of Arts). She is currently in training as a psychodrama psychotherapist (Slovenian Society for Psychodrama). As a theatre director and author she works both on the institutional and independent scene. In recent years, she has directed Gilgalovanje (Glej Theatre, 2018), Satirikonijada (Moment and AGRFT, 2018), Smrčuljčica (SNG Nova Gorica, 2018), Plesni stroj BUM BAM ( Slovene Youth Theatre and Kino Šiška, 2019), Bakice (Savez udruga Molekula, Kolektiv Igralke, KUD Transformator, 2020), and the WoW Awards (City of Women, 2021). Gilgalovanje was included in the competition programme of the Borštnikovo srečanje festival, Bakice was performed at the Young Lions and on various stages in Croatia, including the Ulysses Theatre in Brijuni and the international ZOOM festival in Rijeka, and Satirikonijada won three ZIZ awards and was included in the Sex and Theatre festival. In addition, Tjaša Črnigoj works as a professional accompanist for the Linhart Meeting and the Meeting of Children’s Theatres, and as a pedagogue she regularly cooperates with JSKD and SLOGI. In recent years, she has also worked as a dramaturg (Nataša Živković: Between Two Fires, Via Negativa and City of Women 2020), performer (Physis, Via Negativa 2021), mentor in the project Šift Vie Negativa and the Sploh Institute (2020-2021), and as an assistant director and dramaturg or co-dramaturg with director Tomi Janežić (Seven Questions about Happiness, LGL 2020; Beyond Human Power, National Theatre Oslo, 2021). She has recently returned from an artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where she lived and worked as a prize-winner of the French Institute, for which she also received a scholarship from the Jernej Šugman Fund. In Paris she worked on the transdisciplinary laboratory project Through The Eyes Of The Others. She has also recently been working as a producer with the Studio studying the art of play.

Šejla Kamerić is a visual artist working with film, photography, objects, drawings and installations. She has received widespread recognition for her insightful intimacy and social commentary, which have become major elements of her work. Addressing themes that emerge from non-linear historical narratives, Kamerić focuses on the politics of memory, the modes of resistance in human life and the consequent particularities of women’s struggle. By insisting on empathy as a fundamental communicative mechanism between her, her subjects and her viewers, Kamerić draws attention to and simultaneously creates places of power and political arenas. Her works are part of several art collections, such as TATE Modern, MACBA Barcelona, Contact Collection, Vehbi Koç Foundation. Recently, she has exhibited at the 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Ekaterinburg; Manifesta 14, Prishtina; National Gallery, North Macedonia; Kunsthaus Dresden; New Tertyakov Gallery, Moscow; GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen; Sharjah Art foundation – Sharjah Art Museum.

Darja Zaviršek is a full professor and researcher at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Work. She is Head of the Chair for Social Inclusion and Justice and Professor at the international postgraduate course “Social Work as a Human Rights Profession” at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Studies in Berlin. She is the President of the Eastern European Regional Association of Schools of Social Work, which is part of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and a member of the European Disability Experts network. Main areas of research: gender studies with a focus on violence and sexual abuse; disability studies; history of social work after 1945 in Yugoslavia. Selected monographs: Family Glossary (2021), Roma Families:A Handbook for Understanding Ethical Practice in Social Work and the Rye Helping Professions (2019), Caring as Violence (2018); International and Domestic Adoption (2012); From Blood to Caring: Social Parenting in a Global World; Handicap as Cultural Trauma (2000). She has been involved in the development of social work programmes in Ukraine, Kosovo, Georgia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2022, she was awarded the Eileen Younghusban Memorial Lecture Award by the IASSW.