Lova Annual Report 2022

For printing

Board
In 2022 the board consisted of: Jasmijn Rana as chair; Roxane Kroon as secretary, until she left the board per February; Ina Keuper as treasurer; Tine Davids for general affairs; Juliette Roussel for PR. Three new board members joined: Elsa Charléty in January after accepting the vacant position of chief editor of LOVA Journal; in March Defne Yalman took up the task of organizing events and Nabila Tasneem Anonnya took up the task of secretary. The board had seven meetings: January 25, February 16, March 30; May 18, June 16, September 12, October 17; all meetings were held online.

Due to a lack of in-person events, and the chair being abroad this academic year, we have not organized a General Assembly in 2022. The annual report of 2021 and 2022 will be presented in such a meeting in 2023.

LOVA Journal
In January Elsa Charléty started as the new editor-in-chief. She composed a new editorial board in spring: Lise Zurné who already acted as a guest editor for the 2021 journal now joined  as a regular editor; Loes Oudenhuijsen, Paula Vermue and Nadira Omarjee completed the board of editors. In May a call for contributions to LOVA Journal #43 was sent around by LOVA Mail Service. In July quite some proposals for research articles and other contributions had been received, and in autumn enough contributions came to realization to compile the issue. Unfortunately, Elsa fell ill and had to step down as chief editor; luckily Loes was able to step up and she took over most of her tasks. This resulted in some delays in the editorial and printing process, which meant that he journal could not be completed in December and was shipped in March 2023.

LOVA Journal #43 contains very interesting research articles and other new forms of texts, as well as reports of LOVA activities and information of LOVA members in the Personalia. The new graphic design introduced in the 2021 issue was used again, made by Willy Cremers. Like last year, Printshop FSW of Leiden University printed the journal. 

LOVA Study Day / Lecture
Preparations were made to organise a LOVA Student’s Day at Leiden University on July 13 during which PhD candidates and students of Master’s and Bachelor’s programmes would present and discuss findings of their research. A week before the date scheduled the board decided to cancel the event as too few students applied for a contribution. After the summer holidays the board made another attempt to organise a meeting with students but because of very busy schedules of board members it was impossible to find a date that most board members could be present.

Then another option showed up: organizing a public lecture by Anne-Maria Makhulu in cooperation with the Decolonizing Collective and the Anthropology Department of Leiden University, to be held in November or December. During the preparations of this event we learned that the lecture could best take place in March 2023; this was realised indeed. A report of the event has been published on the website. 

LOVA International Winter School
Like in 2021 a LOVA International Winter School was organised by Irene Arends and Emmy de Wit, this time with the support of Joke Struyf. Although the theme did not change, a new title was used: Motherhoods & Feminisms. Do mothers need feminism? And does feminism need mothers?.  Again, the meetings were held in classrooms of the International Institute for Research and Education in Amsterdam, from December 15 to 18. Most lectures and workshops were executed according to the programme designed, all in class only. Like last year, Tine Davids of the LOVA board opened the event and topics such as matricentric feminism; intensive motherhood; politicization of motherhood; migrant mothers; anti-racist parenting; indigenous ethics of care; the postpartum period; social egg freezing; revolutionary mothering; non-human motherhoods and the pregnant post-human have been addressed. Nineteen participants from a range of different countries and backgrounds joined. Reports of the event have been published in LOVA Journal #43 and on the LOVA website.

LOVA Multimodal Competition 2022
This year the biennial LOVA Photo Competition on the LOVA Facebook page between April 13 and July 14 was transformed into a Multimodal Competition to stimulate contributions in various visual forms. The call for contributions, also distributed by LOVA Mail Service, invited participants to submit a picture, drawing, short video, or animation on the theme of shame and power. Organisers Lin Visser, Lise Zurné, and Julia Zvobgo of Ethnovision, a collective of visual anthropologists, received various contributions in the form of videos, photographs, mixed media works, and images of artefacts. They acted also as the jury and selected Paulina Trejo Mendez as the winner and awarded the contribution of Lianne van Holten and Rosalie van der Wolf with a special mention. The report of the jury has been published on the LOVA website and was announced on Facebook.  

A second LOVA Working Group: Feminist Ethnography in Practice
In addition to the working group on Safety in the field which was created in spring 2020 and which organised webinars in 2020 and 2021, a second working group was launched in February 2022. LOVA chair Jasmijn initiated the platform of Feminist Ethnography in Practice (FEIP) in cooperation with Ine Beljaars in order to demystify research practices and solidify connections with other feminist ethnographers. Jasmijn and Ine organise a monthly online meeting of 1,5 hours during which participants can brainstorm, share or present research ideas; give and receive feedback on grant proposals, a conference paper or draft article; discuss data collected; think through an ethical dilemma, fieldwork preparation, or navigating fieldwork emotions/burnout with others; to workshop un/successful publication strategies, rejections and success stories. This year four meetings have been held.

LOVA Mail Service
In 2022 a total of 50 LOVA Mail Service messages have been sent to LOVA members about various topics: vacancies (20), the new working group Feminist Ethnography in Practice (8), calls for contributing to a journal, conference, symposium and other events (7), book publications of LOVA members (4), invitations for PhD defenses and other meetings (4), and messages about LOVA events, the LOVA Journal and the Multimodal Competition (7). 

PR: Website, Facebook, Instagram
In spring, the pages of the LOVA website have been reorganized by Juliette Roussel and technical expert Nabiha Omar and for most pages the texts have been renewed. A new sub-page for publishing blogs was added; two have been posted during the year. Late spring Nabiha had to quit working for LOVA because of a new job. In the autumn Henk de Vries was found willing to become the new technical expert. The board asked Willy Cremers for a new visual design of the website in line with the new look of LOVA Journal. As such a reconstruction takes quite some time it will be continued in 2023. During the whole year Juliette took care of regularly updating of the website and the LOVA Facebook page; on the latter also events in our field of interest of other organisations have been announced. In spring, Juliette was able to revive the LOVA account at Instagram after various years of silence as the password had been lost; several posts have been placed there regularly.

Two new honorary members
A big event in 2022 was the awarding of a duo-honorary membership of LOVA to former co-chairs (2004-2010) Gerdien Steenbeek and Annelou Ypeij. This was presented in a session on the retirement meeting of Gerdien Steenbeek at the Cultural Anthropology Department of Utrecht University on November 25. Brooches of the (old) LOVA logo were handed out by board member Tine Davids with a speech, and a group of nine senior LOVA members joined Gerdien and Annelou to sing  ‘To be a woman’ (1982) of singer-songwriter Judy Small. A report of the event was posted on the website and background information on both honorary members was published in LOVA Journal #43.  

Finances
Like last year, LOVA had a positive net balance. More members subscribed to LOVA leading to 123 paying members at the end of the year; 15 members transferred also delayed fees. The journal cost extra because of the new graphic design of LOVA Journal #42 next to its somewhat hightened printing costs. We had no expenditure for the annual LOVA Study Day as no such event could be organised this year. The finances of the 2022 International Winter School were not yet completed at the end of the year as some expenditure was charged in 2023; the end result was again with a small profit while this time we could cover the the organisers’ expenses more generously than in previous years. For the Multimodal Competition prizes have been transferred to the winners of the 2022 and of the 2020 competition. The expenditure for PR was higher this year because technical expert Nabila Omar was hired for improving the website. No LOVA Marjan Rens Master’s Thesis Award has been organised as this is a biennial event; it is scheduled for 2023.