Speakers

Debbie Bookchin is an author and award-winning investigative journalist who has written for The Atlantic, The Nation, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Roar Magazine, and numerous other publications. She speaks at various universities and conferences focusing on radical municipalism and Kurdish politics. Debbie served as press secretary for U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders from 1991–1994. She coedited a recent book of essays on municipalism by her father, Murray Bookchin, called The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy (Verso 2015) and is coauthor of the book The Virus and the Vaccine (St. Martin’s Press 2004).

Siana Bangura is a writer, poet, performer, and producer hailing from South East London. She is the author of Elephant, a book of poetry meditating on Black British womanhood and life growing up in London and the founder and former editor of No Fly on the WALL, a platform centering the voices and experiences of Black British women and Black women living in the UK. Siana is the producer of 1500 & Counting, a documentary film investigating deaths in custody in the UK. With experience in indie publishing, journalism, and campaigns under her belt, Siana’s wide portfolio of work focuses on bringing voices from the margins to the center.

Rahila Gupta is a freelance journalist, writer, activist, and longstanding member of Southall Black Sisters, one of the UK’s leading organizations for Black and minority women. She has led important campaigns on domestic violence, such as those concerning abused women who kill, and on changes to immigration rules. Her book, a collection of essays she edited, is titled From Homebreakers to Jailbreakers: Southall Black Sisters (2003). Her articles have been published in The Guardian, New Humanist, New Internationalist, and openDemocracy, among other magazines, journals, and websites. She traveled to Rojava and is a patron of Peace in Kurdistan.

Nazan Üstündağ is a sociologist living in Berlin in exile. She works on war, violence, militarism,
feminist, and postcolonial theory. She is a founding member of Women’s Initiative for Peace, Academics for Peace, and Peace Council in Turkey. Before leaving the country, she taught at Boğaziçi
University in Istanbul. She received her doctoral degree 2005 at Indiana University for her research on the situation of women living in Turkish cities. She has been writing articles for various
publications like Özgür Gündem newspaper, Feminist Yaklaşımlar, and Bianet, as well as academic
journals.

Rita Laura Segato is an Argentinian-Brazilian academic. She has an MA and PhD in Anthropology (1984) from Queens University, Belfast. She teaches anthropology at the University of Brasilia,
where she holds the UNESCO Chair of Anthropology and Bioethics; since 2011 she has taught on
the Postgraduate Programme of Bioethics and Human Rights. She additionally carries out research
on behalf of Brazil‘s National Council for Scientifi c and Technological Development. Her commitment is focused especially in the study of gender violence.

Selay Ghaffar is a political and women’s rights activist from Afghanistan that worked for many
national and international human rights organizations. She was the director of Humanitarian Assistance for the women and children of Afghanistan (HAWCA), established in 1999 in Pakistan.
During the era of the Taliban she was part of the group to establish literacy and science courses for
girls and women. As a spokesperson of the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan (Hambastagi) she is well
known for being outspoken against both US-NATO occupation and warlords.

Miriam Miranda, born in Santa Fe, is an activist currently guiding the Black Fraternal Organization
of Honduras (OFRANEH). She has dedicated her life to defending the cultural and land rights of
the Garífuna people in Honduras. As a young adult, Miriam moved to the capital city Tegucigalpa
to study at public university. Facing incredible risk for the work she is doing, Miriam Miranda’s lifework is signed from a rooted women’s perspective. There are currently two cases against the state
of Honduras, including the case of the killing of co-founder of COPINH, Berta Cáceres, who Miriam
Miranda called her sister, being presented at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).

Gwendoline Coipeault is the head of international action for the French NGO Femmes solidaires
and a journalist for Clara Magazine. She coordinates the International Feminist and Secular Network, which was co-created by Femmes solidaires and nine other international NGOs in 2013. She
is also in charge of Femmes solidaires’ program against cyberviolence.

Shereen Abou el-Naga is Associate Professor of English Literature at Cairo University. Her doctoral
thesis treated the development of Wordsworth‘s poetry. She has taught at the American University of Cairo and the Free University of Berlin, and held a fellowship from the Wissenschaftskolleg
zu Berlin. She is the author of numerous publications in English and Arabic treating literature and
gender, with particular interest in Arab women‘s studies. She is co-founder of Egyptians Against
Religious Discrimination (MARED), a board member of the Egyptian Association of Comparative
Literature, and a member of the Supreme Council for Culture in Egypt.

Mary Joan A. Guan or Jojo, as her family and friends fondly call her, is the executive director of
the Center for Women’s Resources (CRW), a research and training organization that is affi liated
with the nationwide women’s organization GABRIELA. She has more than two decades of experience in advocating for human rights, in conducting research, and education on issues concerning
women, children, and other socio-political matters. As a Filipino woman activist, her mantra is
to serve the people. She believes that the empowerment of women could best be achieved by
consolidating the ranks of working class women, uniting with the rest of the toiling masses, and
working for international solidarity.

Jade Daniels is a movement artist, activist, and writer currently based out of Los Angeles, California.
Jade works as a Communications Organiser with Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. She is also an active
organiser and member of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, and serves on the board of her South Central, Los Angeles-based Afro-futuristic Queer Femme Artist Collective, Snatchpower. She has recently
travelled to Brazil in solidarity and partnership with the Afro-Brazilian, working class poor and grassroots
feminist struggle.

Haskar Kırmızıgül was born in 1975 in Dersim. She completed her education at Marmara University in the Department of History. For the past twenty years she has been an activist in the Kurdish
Freedom Movement. She worked as a journalist at the Sorgul Women’s Journal in Lebanon for two
years and at Roj TV for four years. A founding member of the Jineoloji Centre, she is guiding the
Jineoloji Committee in Europe in activism and research in this area.

Radha D‘Souza is a Reader in Law at the University of Westminster. Before she has taught Law at
University of Waikato in New Zealand, and development studies, sociology and human geography at the University of Auckland. Radha D’Souza practiced law in the High Court of Mumbai in
the areas of labor rights, constitutional and administrative law, public interest litigation and human rights. As social justice activist from India she worked with labor movements and democratic
rights movements as organizer and as activist lawyer. She is also writer, critic and commentator.

Madhu Bhushan is a women‘s and human‘s rights activist and she is involved into VIMOCHANA, one of
the oldest women‘s rights organisation in Bangalore (capital of the federal staat Karnataka of Southern
India) and part of the Indian Women‘s Organisation. In the context of her engagement she impressively
commitet herself for women, which have experienced violence in Karnataka. In 1993 she also was part
of establishing the Center of Intervetion Angala and running several campaigns against dowry deaths,
harassment and female infanticide. The aim of the construction and work of Angala was to create systematic respons to the problems of women socially and legally.

Kibriye Evren comes from the northern kurdish city Bingol and works as journalist for the all-female
news agency JINNEWS. She studied carpet business and couture at the University of Sivas. In her youth
she actively participated in the work of the today banned political parties HADEP and DEHAP. She was
part of the local board of the Democratic Society‘s Party DTP. As activist she was part of the Democratic
Free Women‘s Movement DOKH and the Free Women‘s Congress KJA. She is active member of the Free
Women‘s Movement TJA.