Janet Conway

Professor, Sociology

Office: STH 427
905-688-5550 x4196
jconway@brocku.ca

Education:
PhD, Political Science, York University, 2002
MA, Political Science, York University, 2000
MA, Theology, University of St. Michael’s College, 1990
BA Hons., History, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1984

Janet Conway’s research agenda focuses on contemporary social movements and their significance for democratic social and political life in the context of globalization, its potentialities, crises and conflicts. Globalizing processes and movements of resistance have genealogies that long predate neoliberalism and global network society. My research situates contemporary dynamics in the history of liberal capitalist modernity and its constitutive relation with coloniality, posits that ours is a period of crisis in this longer historical process, and argues that contemporary social movements are harbingers of this transition and carriers both of its latent possibilities and dangers. I am building on two decades of research on global justice movements, transnational feminisms, and Indigenous activisms, on tensions between the politics of difference and solidarity, and on the problem of colonial difference in social justice movements. My research proceeds through ongoing empirical studies as well as through more theoretical and conceptual work on social movements.

My current research examines the gender politics of the resurgent right, in Canada and worldwide, and its implications for feminism’s societal project for intersectional gender justice.

Recent publications include:

Conway, Masson, and Dufour, eds.  Cross-border solidarities in 21st century contexts: Feminist perspectives and activist practices, Rowman & Littlefield International, 2021.

Conway and Lebon, eds. “Popular Feminisms, past(s), present(s) and possible future(s)”.  Latin American Perspectives (48) nos. 4 & 5,  2021.