Zaheeda P. ALIBHAI

Doctoral candidate, Department of Classics and Religious Studies, University of Ottawa

Zaheeda P. Alibhai is a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies with a specialization in Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research investigates the critical intersections between religion, law, politics, media, human rights, science, and ethics in the study of identity, multiculturalism, and pluralism in Canadian and international contexts. She received her H.B.A from the University of Toronto where she worked closely with various non-profit organizations dedicated to promoting and improving children's academic performance in at risk communities. She is the recipient of the SCG scholarship for Outstanding Voluntary Contribution from the University of Toronto. She received her MA in Religion and Public Life from Carleton University. She is the recipient of the Leading Women Building Communities Award from the Canadian Minister of the Status of Women. She has contributed to several volumes exploring the intersection between religion, public policy and pluralism. Her research interests include the history of the philosophy of science, material culture and the study of education. Her research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Zaheeda P. Alibhai will present a contribution titled "The politics of belief: The refashioning of the body in law, public policy and on the virtual public square in the twenty-first century."

Jaspreet BAL

Child and youth care practitioner and Professor (Child and Youth Care program), Humber College, Toronto

Dr. Jaspreet Bal is a Child and Youth Care Practitioner and a Professor in the Child and Youth Care program at Humber College in Toronto. A community organizer and educator, her practice involves radical youth work with underserved populations across North America. She is the editor of the Relational Child and Youth Care Practice Journal. Bal serves on the Board of Directors of the Sikh Feminist Research Institute and the regional Advisory Board of the World Sikh Organization.

Jaspreet Bal and Santbir Singh will present a contribution titled "A case for Kes: A radical Sikh feminist discussion on hair."

Amélie BARRAS

Associate professor, Department of Social Science, York University

Amélie Barras is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science (Law & Society Program) at York University (Toronto). She conducts research on the intersection between law, religion and politics. She has published on the politics of secularism in Turkey and France, including Refashioning Secularisms in France and Turkey: The Case of the Headscarf Ban (Routledge, 2014). She also writes on reasonable accommodation and Islam in Canada. Her most recent publication on the topic includes a book written with Jennifer Selby (Memorial University) and Lori Beaman (University of Ottawa): Beyond Accommodation. Everyday Narratives of Muslim Canadians (UBC Press, 2018). Finally, her newest project documents the work of faith-based non-governmental organizations at the United Nations Human Rights Council, paying particular attention to how these NGOs shape human rights discussions and norms.

Amélie Barras will present a contribution titled "Gender and religion playing hide and seek at the United Nations."

Mathieu BOISVERT

Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal

Mathieu Boisvert has been a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal since 1992. He completed a BA in Religious Studies at McGill University (1981–1984), a diploma in Pali at Siddhartha College, University of Bombay (1984–1985), an MA in South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto (1985–1987), and a PhD in Pali and Sanskrit at McGill University (1987–1991). Since 2012, Boisvert has been working on South Asian hijra "transgender" communities. In 2018, he published Les hijras. Portrait socioreligieux d’une communauté transgenre sud-asiatique at Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal. He is also the author of Comprendre l’Inde (Montréal, Ulysse, 2013) and one of the co-editors of L’Inde et ses avatars. Pluralités d’une puissance (Montréal, PUM, 2014).

Mathieu Boisvert will present (in French) a contribution titled "Hijra identity: at the crossroads of gender, religion, and politics."

Emilie EL KHOURY

Doctoral candidate, Department of Anthropology, Université Laval

Emilie El Khoury is a doctoral student in Anthropology at Université Laval, in Quebec City. Her thesis aims to give a voice to Muslim women living in different countries (Lebanon, Belgium, and Canada) by taking into consideration their experiences and perceptions of radicalization and, particularly, the case of Daesh. Her doctoral study questions and deconstructs the generalized and amalgamated perceptions of radicalization and religion. She is interested in everything related to religions, violence and terrorism in a broad anthropological perspective. She holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master in Social Humanities from the Lebanese University (Beirut) where she specialized in political and religious anthropology. She also holds a Master from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in anthropology, with a specialization in religion. She is also a lecturer at the Anthropology Department, Université Laval, for the course Anthropologie du Moyen-Orient et du Maghreb (Anthropology of the Middle East and the Maghreb) and for the course Diversité culturelle: contexte et enjeux (Cultural Diversity: Context and Issues). She was also a teaching assistant for several courses related to violence, civil wars, religions, and conflicts in the Middle East in the departments of Political Science and Anthropology at Université Laval. Finally, she was research assistant for the CELAT – Centre de recherche Cultures-Art–Sociétés (Center for Cultures, Art, and Society) and for a project on victims of crime at ENAP (The University of Public Administration).

Emilie El Khoury will present (in French) a contribution titled "Subjective Experiences of Muslim Women from Brussels and Montreal on the Concept of Secularism."

Marlene EPP

Professor, History and Peace and Conflict Studies, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo

Marlene Epp is a Professor of History and Peace & Conflict Studies, and former Dean at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo. Her teaching and scholarship focus on the history of immigrants and refugees, Mennonite studies, gender, food history, and the history of peace and nonviolence. She has been editor of the Canadian Historical Association booklet series on Immigration and Ethnicity in Canada / L’immigration et l’ethnicité au Canada since 2009. Her books, authored and co-edited, include: Women Without Men: Mennonite Refugees of the Second World War (University of Toronto Press,2000); Mennonite Women in Canada: A History (University of Manitoba Press, 2008); Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History, co-edited with Franca Iacovetta and Valerie Korinek (University of Toronto Press, 2012); and Sisters or Strangers? Immigrant, Ethnic, and Racialized Women in Canadian History, co-edited with Franca Iacovetta (University of Toronto Press, 2016). Additional recent publications include: Responding to ‘War’s Havoc’: The Relief Work of Mennonite Women in Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw (eds.), Making the Best of It: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the Second World War (UBC Press, 2020).

Marlene Epp will present a contribution titled "Quaint and curious: Dress codes as signifiers of cultural and religious representation for Mennonite women."

Jairan GAHAN

Assistant professor, History & Classics Department, University of Alberta

Jairan Gahan is an assistant professor of religious studies and history at the University of Alberta. She finished her PhD in religious studies, at the University of Toronto, where she also served as a postdoctoral fellow in 2018. Her research investigates the intersection of women's history and modern Islam, spanning the twentieth century Iran, with a special focus on Islamic law and its (trans)formations. Currently, she is working on her book project tentatively titled «Morality on Trial: Prostitution in Tehran, 1915-1981». Her most recent publication «The Sovereign and the Sensible: Islam, Prostitution, and Moral Order in Tehran, 1911-1922» was published in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Jahan Gahan will present a contribution titled "Sex on Trial: The Legal History of Sexual Crimes in Iran in the Early 20th century Iran."

Géraldine MOSSIÈRE

Professor, Institut d'Études Religieuses, Université de Montréal

Géraldine Mossière is an anthropologist and associate professor at the Institut d’Études Religieuses (IÉR), Université de Montréal. She is interested in contemporary religious behavior and religious diversity in secularized societies. Her research on religious conversions, started in 2006, focuses on various dimensions of religious change: gender, mixed unions, identity transmission, socialization, sociability and believing subjectivity. In 2013, she published Converties à l’Islam, Parcours de femmes en France et au Québec at the Presses de l’Université de Montréal. From 2019 to 2020, she held the Chair in Transregional Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IMERA, Marseille—France), where she worked on transregional movements related to conversion. She is currently completing a SSHRC Knowledge project (2016–2020) on young people who convert to Islam. This work has led her to focus her research on issues related to spirituality and healing in contemporary societies

Géraldine Mossière will present a contribution titled "Regulation and sexual liberation in Quebec: Sexuality as a driver of social change."

Audrey ROUSSEAU

Assistant professor, Department of Social Sciences, Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO)

Audrey Rousseau is a sociologist and assistant professor at the Department of Social Sciences, Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO). She specializes in memory studies, issues relating to Indigenous peoples, and the structures of inequality at the root of women's oppression. Examining the production, circulation, and interpretation of discourses on the past, her research led her to explore two fieldwork sites: Quebec and the Republic of Ireland. The first project involves a collaborative study (in progress) aiming to analyze the colonial, racial and gender-based violence suffered by First Nations women and girls in Quebec (and the culturally secure means of preventing them), while the second is an analysis of reparation mechanisms to address the imprisonment and forced labor of thousands of women in religious institutions in Ireland (18th-20th centuries).

Audrey Rousseau will present (in French) a contribution titled "'This is a Catholic country' or how the preventable death of Savita Hallapanavar became the emblem of the pro-choice movement in the Republic of Ireland."

Santbir SINGH

Masters student, Department of Sociology, York University

Santbir Singh is an avid student of Sikhi. He is currently doing his Masters in Sociology at York University, looking at anarchism in Sikhi. He has served as an educator in the Canadian Sikh community for two decades. Singh’s work focuses on Sikh inspirations for social activism, feminism and human rights through a critical analysis using different schools of thought and tradition. He is a historian and uses accessible platforms to create easily digestible and evidence-based content for young Sikhs.

Jaspreet Bal and Santbir Singh will present a contribution titled "A case for Kes: A radical Sikh feminist discussion on hair."

Organizers

Catherine LAROUCHE

Assistant professor, Department of anthropology, Université Laval

Catherine Larouche is an assistant professor at the Department of anthropology, Université Laval. Grounded in the anthropology of religion, political anthropology and the anthropology of development, her research interests focus on philanthropic organizations and other non-state development actors, social service provision in South Asia, and relations between religious groups. She is also interested in Islam in South Asia and its transformations. In particular, her work focuses on the role played by Islamic humanitarian organizations in social service provision in India and on the relationship between religious minorities and majorities in the secular Indian context. Her projects also address issues related to gender and religion, notably through the analysis of the forms of economic development and participation in the labor market advocated by different Muslim women’s organizations in India. At Université Laval, she teaches courses on the anthropology of religion, South Asia, qualitative research methods and development.

Florence PASCHE GUIGNARD

Assistant professor, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Université Laval

Florence Pasche Guignard is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the Université Laval in Quebec City. Her research topics are at the intersection of religions and spirituality with women’s history, gender, embodiment, ritual, media, and material culture. At the crossroads of religious studies and other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, she has worked on traditional and emerging ritualization around pregnancy and childbirth, and on the spiritual dimensions of fertility management methods and their modernization through digital technology. Her most recent publications focus on various aspects of motherhood in religious contexts. Her areas of specialization also include South Asian religious traditions. Issues of theory and methodology in religious studies and pedagogical reflection on academic teaching about religions are also part of her practical explorations in her discipline and in dialogue with others. Her courses at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the Université Laval focus on several South Asian religious traditions as well as on women and gender constructions in various historical and contemporary religious contexts, with a comparative dimension.