Center for Gender Studies

Center for Gender Studies was founded at the European Humanities University in Minsk in October 1997 with support from John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation. Initially, EHU’s first graduate program was MA in Gender Studies, launched in 2000. Since 1997 the Center has organized a series of conferences, workshops, seminars, trainings, and courses; published several books, thematic volumes of journals, conducted several research projects. After the relocation of EHU to Vilnius in 2005, the Center continued its activities, including research, education, activist projects – in both Belarus and Lithuania.


CGS is a community of researchers and activists who view gender studies not only as a promising area of knowledge but also as an opportunity to change the world for the better.

Activities of the Center for Gender Studies

The main areas of activities of the Center for Gender Studies at the European Humanities University are the following:

  • conduct and support research  and education in the field of Gender Studies in the interdisciplinary perspective;
  • promote the incorporation of Gender Studies into  the University curriculum;
  • to develop cooperation in the field of gender equality between academia, media and non-governmental organizations in the region.

Research areas:

  • Social Stratification of post-Soviet Societies: Gender, Class, Nation;
  • Gender  Representations in Visual Culture and Feminist Curatorship;
  • Gender, Mobility, and Human Rights;
  • Gendered Issues in Media;
  • Gender and Economy under Postsocialism;
  • Gender, Science and Technologies;
  • Gender and Language;
  • Gay and Lesbian Studies / Queer Studies.

Corresponding study programs:

Team in AY 2022/23

  • Teachers: Prof. Elena Gapova, Prof. Almira Ousmanova, Dr. Uladzislau Ivanou, Lect. PhD Andrei Vazianau, Dr. Alexander Pershai
  • Students: Alina Pazdniakova (5th year, BA Media and Communication); Anastasiya Selivanava (1st year, MA Gender Studies; member of the Academic Committee “Communication and Sociology”); Marina Mentusova (1st year, MA Gender Studies); Aksana Maliukova (1st year, MA Gender Studies).
  • PhD students: Nadezhda Ilushenko, Natalia Sorokovik
  • “Women in Tech” project coordinators: Anna Samarskaya,  Antonina Stebur

Contact details

 Contact usClick here
Founder: Prof. Elena Gapova
Coordinator: Dr. Uladzislau Ivanou
Academia page
Facebook page

Activities 2014-2021

Scientific publications

  • «Post-Socialist Anxiety: Gender Studies in Eastern Europe in the Context of the Conservative Backlash,  thematic volume of Crossroads, 1-2/2017 (EHU, edited by B.Cope, E.Minchenya and O.Sasunkevich)
  • Elena Gapova. Classes of Nation (Moscow: NLO, 2016);
  • Elena Gapova. “Gender Equality vs. Difference and What Post-socialism Can Teach Us” Women’s Studies International Forum, 2016, 59: 9-16
  • Elena Gapova. “Things Fall Apart”: The Moral Revolutions of Svetlana Alexievich.” Slavic Eurasian Studies, 2016, 30: 103-116.
  • Elena Gapova. “Becoming Visible in Digital Age: Class and Media Issues in the Pussy Riot Affair”  Feminist Media Studies, 2015, 15(1): 18-35. Reprinted in Mediating PosSocialist Femininities (N. Kaneva ed.), Routledge, 2016, 18-35.
  • Elena Gapova. “Suffering and the Soviet Man’s Search for Meaning in the Works of Svetlana Alexievich” in Contemporary Literature Criticism Yearbook. Gale Cengage: Gale’s Literature Resource Center, 2016.
  • Elena Gapova. “Suffering and Search for Meaning: the Moral Revolutions of Svetlana Alexievich” [in Russian “Stradanie I poisk smysla: mora’nye revolutsii Svetlana Aleksievich”]. Neprikosnovennyi Zapas (Moscow), 2015, 99/1: 209-223. Published in German in Osteuropa (the leading German journal for Slavic studies), 2018, 1-2: 211-222.
  • Uladzislau Ivanou (Harbacki). On the inclusive Belarusian language, ACTA ALBARUTHENICA, Tom 19, 2019, Warsaw, c. 231-240. In Belarusian;
  • Uladzislau Ivanou (Harbacki). “Works of Paluta Badunova” (Preface and print preparation), Gudų kultūros draugija Lietuvoje, 2018;
  • Uladzislau Ivanou, Vulnerable-Groups Stereotyping in Lithuania,  Case Study of Gays in 2015-2016, Online Hate Speech in the European Union, A Discourse-Analytic Perspective || Assimakopoulos, Stavros, Baider, Fabienne H., Millar, Sharon (eds.), Springer, 2017, pp. 38-42
  • Uladzislau Ivanou (Harbacki). Guide to the feminization of the Belarusian language;
  • Uladzislau Ivanou (Harbacki). Feminization of  Belarusian language, sociolinguistic research, Gudų kultūros draugija Lietuvoje, Vilnius, 2019 (in Belarusian)
  • Alexander Pershai. The Language Puzzle: Is Inclusive Language a Solution? // Everyday Women’s and Gender Studies: Introductory Concepts. Ed. by A. Braithwaite, C. M. Orr. New York & London: Routledge, 2017. P. 55-58.
  • Alexander Pershai. Revisiting the Concept of “Colonization Vice Versa”: On the Disciplinary Struggles of Post-Soviet Gender Linguistics // Crossroads. 2017, No. 1-2, p. 58-78.
  • Alexander Pershai. Semantics of Gender: On Gender Stratification in Idiomatic Expressions (2014);
  • Elena Gapova, Almira Ousmanova “Love and Sex in BSSR” Review of Alexander Guzhalovski’s book “Sexual Revolution in Soviet Belarus, 1917 – 1929”, in ARCHE, 3 (158), 2018, pp. 39 – 48 (BELARUSIAN);
  • Almira Ousmanova “In a Position of a Participant Observer: Gender, Knowledge and Power in P.S. Academia”. In: Bühler-Dietrich, Annette (ed.) Feministische Zirkulationen zwischen Ost und West  (Berlin: Frank & Timme), 2019, pp. 25 – 45;
  • Almira Ousmanova. On the ‘postfeminist fantasy of equality’: gender knowledge in-between university and media]. pARTisankA: альманах сучаснае беларускае культуры: Галiяфы, 2020, 3, p. 24-34.

Other publications

  • “Women in Politics; New Approaches to the Political” (journal, Vols. 1-2-3 (2014 – 2017), ed. By E. Ivanova and A. Pershai

Organized conferences

  • The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir and Post/Feminist Condition in the XXI century (2019)

Other events

Projects

  • Educational and Publishing Project “Gendered BNR” (publication of works of women who collaborated in the Belarusian National Republic). The first book of this series was published in 2019 and is dedicated to Paluta Badunova. Continuation of the series: Vanda Liavickaja, Larysa Henijuš, Ivonka Survila, Nina Abramčyk. In collaboration with the Belarusian diaspora in the UK, Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum, London (2019-2024)
  • Project “Gender Studies and War Challenges in Resilience  of the Universities in Ukraine: Networking  for Excellence in Teaching and Institutional Development”; 2023 – 2024; partners – Lund University (LU), Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (TSNUK) and Ilia State University, Tbilisi (ISU)

Students Projects

  • Project “Femthursday”.

  • The project team conducts a series of webinars on feminism “Own Room”. “Own room” is an open discussion space, where every one can not only learn and discover new facets in gender equality and anti-discrimination issues, but also ask their questions, express opinions and participate in the discussion of such difficult, but extremely topical issues.
  • The project team members: Karalina Rynkevich (4th year, BA Media and Communication); Evgenia Trapeznicova (4th year, BA Media and Communication); Kseniya Lukashenia (2nd year, BA Media and Communication); Sabina Aliyeva (2nd year, MA International Law and European Union Law); Rohava Yelizaveta (1st year, BA Visual Design); Julia Lysakouskaya (2nd year, BA Media and Communication); Liampert Iliya (alumni of BA program World Politics and Economics, 2020).
  • More detailed information about the “Own Room” webinars’ cycle and the “Femthursday” project can be found on social networks:

Partners

  • Belarusian House of Human Rights (Vilnius)
  • Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM), University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria
  • Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University (Ukraine)/ Research Center for Gender Education
  • Center for Equality Advancement (Vilnius)
  • Gallery of Contemporary Art “Y” (Minsk)
  • Adliga: NGO “Women for Full Citizenship” (Belarus)
  • Office for European Expertise and Communications (Minsk)
  • Collective MakeOut (Minsk)
  • Magazine ПрайдзіСвет (Minsk)
  • Gender Culture Center (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
  • Сentre “Women’s Perspectives” (Lviv, Ukraine)
  • Public Association “Radzislava” (Minsk)
  • French Media Library and French Embassy in Belarus
  • Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum (London)
  • l’Institut Français à Vilnius
  • Journal of Social Criticism (Kyiv)
  • Tamara Martsenyuk (National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”, sociology faculty member)
  • Volha Hapeyeva, poet, linguist, feminist writer and others.