Lova Annual Report 2017

For printing

Board
In 2017 the board consisted of Marina de Regt (chair), Ina Keuper (treasurer and journal), Filipa Oitaven (secretary), Irene Arends (PR), Luisa Machacón (PR) and Roséanne Aukes (representing non-academic anthropologists), The board met four times: on March 17, June 7, September 21 and December 22. On March 17 the board meeting consisted of a brainstorm about the future of LOVA. The General Members’ Meeting was held during the International Conference on July 7. 

LOVA Journal
LOVA Journal #38 was published in December. This issue of our journal was made by Silvia Herrero Simancas as editor in chief and Kitti Baracsi, Ina Keuper, Charlotte Knoors, Nikki Mulder, Jasmijn Rana en José van Santen as editors. The layout was done by Silvia Herrero Simancas who had introduced the new design in 2016. Ina Keuper also helped with the layout and she and Marina de Regt took part in the final editing to support of Silvia. The journal was sent to all members just  before the Christmas holidays. 

LOVA panel at the Annual Anthropology Day
On May 19 LOVA participated in the Annual Anthropology Day of the Association of Anthropologists in The Netherlands (ABv) with a panel session entitled Gender and solidarity issues in South Asia: Rethinking research practices, communication and ethics. Two LOVA members had responded to our call for contributions. Jolanda Bunnekreef presented personal experiences in the international solidarity movement for the emancipation of Dalit people in India and Mishu Abu Ahasan shared some findings from his PhD research project among a group of homeless children, women and queers living at a shrine of a local saint in a Dhaka neighbourhood in Bangladesh. Luisa Steur (University of Amsterdam) was invited to comment on both talks from her experiences with research on the emancipation movement of Adivasi in the Indian state of Kerala. 

LOVA International Conference
From July 5-7 the fourth international LOVA conference took place. The topic of the conference was Ethnographies of Gender and Mobility. Marina de Regt was the convenor of the conference and was assisted by Ina Keuper (finances and correspondence with participants), Sofie Degenaar and Satya Patchineelam (selection of abstracts), Gintare Pranskaityte, Megan Romania, and Adenike Alade (practicalities during the conference). The conference took place at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The conference started on Wednesday July 5 with the screening of two films, which was followed by a keynote lecture by Katarzyna Grabska (Senior Researcher, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland) entitled Ethnographic methods: Gendered and (im)mobility in displacement and forced migration. On Thursday July 6 and Friday July 7 thirteen panels took place with a total number of 38 papers by 42 participants from all over the world and another film screening with two films. Naomi van Stapele (post doctoral research fellow VU and UvA) gave a keynote lecture on Friday afternoon July 7 entitled Geographies of fear: Masculinities, belonging and im/mobility in the context of police killings after which the closing session with the LOVA Marjan Rens Master’s Thesis Award ceremony took place. In addition to the participants about ten people attended the conference as visitors.

On the evening of July 6 LOVA organized a public event in cooperation with ATRIA and the World House about migrant and refugee women in the Netherlands, entitled Resilient Women: Gender and Migration in the Netherlands. Louma Nourallah from Syria, Palwasha Hassan from Afghanistan, and Cindy from Cameroon presented their experiences of living in the Netherlands, and Ratna Saptari spoke about the activities of the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union in the Netherlands. Women from the Worldhouse prepared tea and coffee and snacks. Around 50 people attended the event and the responses were very positive. 

LOVA panel at EASA Network for the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality
On November 23 LOVA participated with a panel session in the two-day workshop (En)gendering new conversations: Ethnographic research and its contribution to politicized debates on gender and sexuality” of the Network for the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) at University of Groningen, The Netherlands. The panel was organized by Brenda Bartelink and Marina de Regt. Rahil Roodsaz (PhD candidate at Radboud University Nijmegen), Suchi Karim (PhD candidate at Radboud University Nijmegen), May Ngo (Asia Research Institute at Singapore), and Francesca Minimel (PhD candidate at University of Marseille) presented some very intriguing research findings about a Dutch-Bangladeshi adolescent sexuality education project, sexuality rights activism in Bangladesh, the motives of Roman Catholic Christian nuns to support female industrial workers in Cambodia, and the “vagina politics” in HIV-Aids prevention campaigns by American Christian NGOs in Togo. Other LOVA members participated in other panels, The EASA seminar and the collaboration was a great success. 

LOVA International Summer School
The board decided not to organize a Summer School in 2017 because in the summer the fourth LOVA International Conference took place. Combining the conference with a summer school had proven to be too much work. 

LOVA Marjan Rens Master’s Thesis Award
In 2017 ten Master’s theses were submitted for the thesis award. José van Santen and Marion den Uyl made a shortlist of three theses and together with Reinhilde König selected the top three. The prize winners were:

1. Belén Gianquinta (Human Rights, Gender and Conflict Studies, ISS): Silenced subjectivities and misrepresentations – Exposing the contradictions of the international child marriage discourse
2. Afiah Vijlbrief (Sociology, VU): Genderfluidity: A qualitative study on the gender identity of the Amsterdam genderfluids
3. Menal Ahmad (Cultural Anthropology, UU): The fight – An ethnographic study on the relationship between gender, martial arts, and Iranian women’s citizenship

The award ceremony took place on July 7, at the closing session of the International Conference. 

LOVA Mail Service
Since May 9 messages of LOVA Mail Service have been sent from the new mailbox of mail@lova.network and we ended the use of the private mailbox of our secretary Filipa Oitavén. The sending of messages was now also done more regularly; a total of 94 messages have been sent to all LOVA members from May 9 on and the list of addressees has been updated regularly. 

Website and Facebook
After the preparations in late 2016 the website has been redesigned early 2017. Luisa Machacón took the lead and together with ICT expert Sebastiaan Stam she came up with a completely new website, with new headings, pages, pictures and texts, using the TransIP company as web host and the Content Management System of WordPress. With this change we could open four new mailboxes addresses: mail@lova,network; info@lova.network; conference@lova.network; journal@lova.network. We also changed the payment facilities on the website from Paypal into those of Mollie Payments. We thanked the Pardon Pardon graphic design company for their excellent services and cooperation for the previous website over the past years.

Regarding Facebook, we decided to post only items that are clearly related to gender and anthropology. This year we have gone from 813 page likes in January to 1054 page likes in December. Hence, we also saw an increase in average post reach. We continued to augment the number of posts we publish on our Facebook page, mostly concerning our own events but also announcements from associations and institutions that we believe LOVA followers are interested in. 

Finances
After the problems with collecting the membership fees in 2015 and 2016 members have been addressed individually by the treasurer to pay their fee for 2016 and 2017. This action was really successful and many funds have been received. At the end of 2017 we had 84 paying members and some did also already pay for 2018. In the course of 2017 we opened a new bank account at Triodos Bank and started to close our account at ING Bank in order to contribute to a more social responsible financial system. A mandate form for direct debit collection of the membership fees at Triodos Bank has been distributed together with the LOVA Journal of December 2017.

The International Conference of July 2017 could be closed with a small profit. In 2017 we still had to pay a delayed invoice of the LOVA International Summer School of 2016. The highest spending was used for the payment of an ICT expert in order to construct a new website together with a new emails account. Fortunately the expenses for lay-outing, printing, and distribution of the LOVA Journal could be decreased quite a lot compared with the previous year. That was because of a new graphic designer while we returned to Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam for the printing and distribution.