Lori Amy (USA)
U.S.-based academic, went to Albania on a research sabbatical in February 2009 to conduct research for a book project on gender violence and globalization.
Peggy Antrobus (BARBADOS/CANADA)
is a feminist activist, author, and scholar from the Caribbean. She served as Advisor on Women’s Affairs to the government of Jamaica, and as United Nations advisor to the Barbados Ministry of Social Transformation. She is a founder member of several feminist organisations, including the Caribbean Association for Feminists Research and Action (CAFRA), the global South feminist network Development Alternatives with Women foa a New Era (DAWN), and the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN).She is the author of The Global Women’s Movement: Origins, Issues and Strategies.
Charito Basa (Philippines/Italy)
Charito Basa is a freelance development and research consultant and the founder and current vice chair of the Filipino Women’s Council. She is author of several publications on migrant workers and has become one of the major spokespersons on women migrants’ issues. She has worked as a resource person and trainer for many Italian and international organisations.
Linda Christiansen Ruffman
Linda Christiansen-Ruffman is Professor Emerita of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Saint Mary’s University where she began in 1970 during her sociology PhD (1976) from Columbia University’s all-male department. Her early research on newcomers, women in Halifax and Labrador Straits, and community-based research gradually led to participatory&action methodologies and feminist grounded theorizing. She challenged concepts (leadership, politics and wealth) in “women’s community work.” (more)
Francesca Colombini (Italy)
Cooperates with various women’s associations organizing events and congrsses based on matriarchal studies and work incommunication and internationalrelations. In 2013 shewas one of the authors of the documentary Matriarchè and edited a a book with the same title for teh publisher Exòorma. She works at Rai Ragazzi, Italy’s national broadcasting company for kids.
Mary Condren (Ireland)
is director of Woman Spirit Ireland and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies in the School of Histories and Humanities at Trinity College Dublin. Her critical work concerns the role of violence and the discourses of sacrifice in contemporary politics. Her constructive work focusses on recuperating the indigenous female traditions of Old Europe in Ireland. More information @ The Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies and Academia.edu/MaryCondren
Laura De Micheli (Italy)
Award-winning movie trailer director and editor. Web Director and Designer. Feminist activist, members of various associations and volunteer fo ther Women’s Building in Rome and the Italian Feminist Movement. Former member of the Roma Pride Commitee and activist in the LGBTQI movement.
Maria Luisa Di Blasi (Italy)
Maria Luisa Di Blasi is an Italian writer, literary critic and director, deeply concerned with the themes of identity, creation and transcendence, with a special reference to women’s experience and thought. She wrote the books L’altro silenzio (2001), Il mio nome è Tecla. Vita e ritratto di Teresa Merlo (2008), Rosso Tango (2010) and many essays including Il tabù dell’anima (2004), Autrici di reale (2005), Tre follie del femminile (2004). Among her documentary films we mention 1946-2016: Ragazze (2016) and Special and common readers (2019) dedicated to Virginia Woolf. “Being outside the market. To recover integrity in the light of the gift economy” is her last publication, included in the festschrift Mothering, Gift and Revolution–Honoring Genevieve Vaughan’s Life Work (2020).
Angela Dolmetsch (Colombia)
Angela Dolmetsch, PhD. Education:Ph.D. Government, 2006 at London School of Economics, M.A 1989: London University, Law Degree 1980: Universidad San Buenaventura, Colombia. Publications: La otra Cara del Dolar (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo 1985), Of Govermnments and Guerrillas, Terrorism and Torture in Latin America (London: Biddles, 1988).
Jodie Evans (USA)
American political activist, author, and documentary film producer. She characterizes her activism as working for peace and justice, environmental causes and women’s rights. co-founder of CODEPINK and the after-school writing program 826LA. She has been a visionary advocate for peace for several decades.
Tracy Gary (USA)
As a donor activist and philanthropist for more than 25 years, Ms. Gary supports and educates donors, family foundations, financial service organizations and nonprofits about the stewardship of money, leadership, and philanthropy. She has also founded 14 nonprofits including Resourceful Women; the Women’s Foundation of San Francisco; the International Donor Dialogue Network, and her latest venture, the Changemakers to expand and strengthen community-based philanthropy. Ms. Gary serves on several boards of directors including the Human Rights Foundation, the International Development Exchange, World College West, and the Women’s Philanthropy Institute.
Heide Goettner Abenndroth (Germany)
Dr Heide Goettner-Abendroth is a mother and a grandmother. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy of science at the University of Munich where she lectured for ten years (1973-1983). She lectured extensively at home and abroad. In 1986, she founded the International ACADEMY HAGIA for Matriarchal Studies in Germany, and since then has been its director. More on her work: www.goettner-abendroth.de, www.hagia.de (read more)
Nane Jordan
Nané Jordan, PhD: I am a birthkeeper, scholar, artist, mother, and community worker, with a working background in Canadian grassroots midwifery. My life-long concerns are for women’s empowerment, especially through honouring the sacredness of pregnancy, birth-giving, early mothering and beyond. I have been a long-time advocate for mothers’ access to midwives, doulas, and holistic, mother-centred supports. I am also a practitioner-scholar of women’s spirituality and goddess feminism. (read more)
Cécile Keller (Germany/Switzerland)
She was born in 1948 in Switzerland and is medical doctor. She also trained at the Centre for Shamanistic Wisdom and Knowledge “Quetzalcoatl” in Ronco, Tessin (Switzerland), and is trained in physiotherapy and phytotherapy. Since 2005, she works as doctor and healer in her own practice in Germany. Since 1997, she collaborated at the International Academy HAGIA and, since 2007, is co-director. She is guiding the Matriarchal Mystery Festivals and the Spiritual Healing Circles. She does research on Matriarchal Medicine and presented it at the two World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies in Luxembourg (2003) and San Marcos, Texas (2005).
Kaarina Kailo (Finland)
Has been professor at Oulu University, Finland, Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Montreal, Canada and senior scholar of the Finnish Academy. Her activism, research and work as politician ranges from globalization and the Nordic welfare state, Finno-Ugric traditional ecological knowledge/gift economy, bear ceremonials and ancient models of maternal subjectivity.
Rauna Kuokkanen (Finland)
Research Professor of Arctic Indigenous Studies at the University of Lapland (Finland) and Adjunct Professor of Indigenous Studies and Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on comparative Indigenous politics, Indigenous feminist theory, Arctic governance and settler colonialism.
Letecia Layson (USA)
Letecia Layson is a Filipina, Feminist, Futurist, Priestess of Morphogenesis (Form Coming Into Being), High Priestess of Diana; Priestess Hierophant in FOI/TOI-LA. Letecia is one of the founding Mothers of the Center for Babaylan Studies; a member of International Feminists for Gift Economy, Modern Matriarchal Studies Network
Francesca Lulli (Italy)
PhD works on women’s economies in West Africa and on practices of resistance to socio-financial crisis in Italy. Vicepresident of Self- Funded Communities, she has been Professor of Socioanthropology at Sapienza Univesity. She works aa a consultant with several organizatios on issues of empowerment, well-being through culture and the strenghtening of old woomen.
Angela Miles
Angela Miles is a founding member of Toronto Women for a Just and Healthy Planet, Antigonish Women’s Association, Feminist Network for a Gift Economy and a member of the editorial board of Canadian Woman Studies. She teaches at the oise/University of Toronto where, with Alda Facio, she co-founded the International Women’s Human Rights Education Institute. Her publications include, Integrative Feminisms: Building Global Visions and the edited collection Women in a Globalizing World: Transforming Equality, Development, Diversity and Peace.
Vicky Noble (USA)
American feminist shamanic healer, author, scholar and wisdom teacher. Coo-creator of Motherpeace Tarot, and author of eight books including Shakti Woman and The Double Goddess; her books have been translated and published in several countres. She travels and teaches internationally.
Luciana Percovich (Italy)
is an italian female non-fiction writer a women spirituality pundit. She was born in Gorizia, Italy in a Mitteleuropean Italian speaking family forced to leave Fiume, Rijeka at the end of World War II, with cultural and geographical roots in Austria and Dalmatia, she spent her childhood and adolescence in Gorizia attending Classical studies. At the age of 18, she went to Milan to complete her education, and there she graduated in 1972 (Lingue e Letterature Straniere Moderne – Università degli Studi di Milano). She has been defined as “a traveller between worlds and a weaver of space-time connections for her ability of embracing distant wide horizons with a loving insight”.
Susan Petrilli (Italy/Australia)
is an Italian semiotician, Professor of Philosophy and Theory of Languages at the University of Bari, Aldo Moro, Italy, and the Seventh Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America. She is also International Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Psychology, the University of Adelaide, South Australia. She published over one hundred books and peer-reviewed articles in the field of semiotics and philosophy of language, in both English and Italian. Her works have been translated into several languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, Serbian and Spanish
Erella Shadmi (Israel)
Erella Shadmi is an Israeli social-feminist and sociologist activist in a variety of fields: activities for peace and social change, the study of Israeli society and police, women and feminism, and research and post-patriarchal activism Giving and matriarchal societies. Shadmi served as a police officer during the 1970s until the 1990s, when she retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Elena Skoko (Italy)
Elena Skoko is a mom, singer and author. She lives a nomadic life between Bali, Rome and Croatia. With her partner she formed a blues band Bluebird & Skoko. Her artistic path is linked with her life: she’s been a punk rock singer, indie fashion designer, electronic poet, video maker and art performer. After the ecstatic experience of birth, Elena dedicated her life to storytelling, promoting the idea of birth as a luminous and empowering rite of passage to motherhood. Her first book, Memoirs of a Singing Birth is available in English and Italian.
Maya Vassallo
Maya Vassallo Di Florio is the founder of the Goddess Temple of Rome, first modern temple of Italy and community with the intent of creating healthier models of existence, e-ducating to a new social paradigm. She teaches in paths of study and reserach based on the matricentric values of care, Gift Economy, pacific communication between people, partnership, respect for the planet and biophilia. She collaborates with La Sapienza University and holds workshops and talks about Goddess Spirituality and Matriarchy all over Italy and the world. Projects of international relief: “Three Year Training Priestess of the Sea – Priestess of Aphrodite”©, “Ra-Activation of Goddess Ancient Temples and Places”, “Roma Goddess Conference”©. http://www.mayavassallo.com http://www.tempiodellagrandedea.com http://www.goddesstemplerome.com
Genevieve Vaughan
Genevieve Vaughan, born in Texas in 1939, founded the international activist Foundation for a Compassionate Society (1987-2005), the Temple of Sekhmet in Cactus Springs, Nevada (1992), and initiated a network International Feminists for a Gift Economy in 2001. Her books For-Giving, Homo donans and many other resources are available at: www.gift-economy.com.
Frieda Werden (USA)
Frieda Werden is co-founder and series producer of WINGS: Women’s International News Gathering Service, which provides women’s voices and issues coverage to noncommercial radio. The project started with the contact list from a radio women’s meeting called by Genevieve Vaughan at the 3rd World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985. The pilot was funded and distributed by US National Public Radio, but WINGS found a more receptive audience through the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC). Werden’s paper on community radio appears in the anthology Women and the Gift Economy.
Liliana Wilson
Liliana Wilson was born in Valparaíso, Chile. Her early paintings sought to process the trauma she had witnessed in Chile that coincided with the dramatic political changes that followed the 1970 election of Salvador Allende and the subsequent military coup in 1973 that initiated a wave of human rights violations. She immigrated to the United States in 1977. A book on her work called “Ofrenda “ was published by Texas A & M Press in 2015, edited by Dr Norma E Cantu, and it is a collection of writings on Liliana’s work by Gloria E Anzaldua, Antonia Castañeda , Kay Turner and others.