About the speakers

Professor Deevia Bhana - Contested Pleasures: Childhood Sexualities from the Margins

Pleasure lies at the heart of sexuality — except, when pleasure concerns childhood.

In this talk, Professor Deevia Bhana repositions childhood within a pleasure-centred framework arguing that taking young people’s account of sexuality seriously is vital for sexual health and reproductive justice.

Deevia Bhana holds the Research Chair in Gender and Childhood Sexuality at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Dr. Kateřina Lišková - Traveling Expertise: Maternal and Child Health in Socialist East-Central Europe

This talk examines how physicians and psychologists in socialist Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and East Germany shaped everyday practices around maternal and child health, tracing how expert knowledge crossed borders rather than being dictated by Party ideology from above.

Kateřina Lišková is Associate Professor at the Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, expertise, and health.

Professor Caroline Rusterholz - Family Planning, Population and South Asian women in Britain 1960s-1990s

Prof. Rusterholz will examine how family planning services tried to address the needs of South Asian women in Britain, and places these policies in conversation with women’s experiences at a time of increasing hostility towards the immigration of individuals from former colonies.

Caroline Rusterholz is Professor of Social History at Fribourg University and Assistant Professor Eccellenza at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. She has published widely on the issues of reproductive politics and sexual and reproductive health in Europe.