Prof. Rosemarie Buikema
Rosemarie Buikema is professor emerita of Art, Culture and Diversity, Utrecht University. She is now retired and gave her farewell lecture on October 10, 2023. She  was the scientific director of the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University, the Utrecht coordinator of GEMMA, the Erasmus Mundus joint degree in Gender and Women’s Studies in Europe and the scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies. Next to that she co-chaired the UU IOS Hub Gender and Diversity: Building an Inclusive Society
She is the initiator and project leader of MOED, Museum of Equality and Difference.
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Prof. Berteke Waaldijk
Berteke Waaldijk is professor of Language- and Culture Studies at the Faculty of Humanities at Utrecht University and works at the Graduate Gender Programme. Waaldijk’s research focuses on gender, culture and citizenship. She publishes on history and gender of Social Work in the Netherlands and in Europe, on colonial culture and citizenship, on history of Dutch Women’s movements and on gender, history and philosophy of the humanities.
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Prof. Sandra Ponzanesi
Sandra Ponzanesi is professor of Gender and Postcolonial Studies at the department of Media and Culture Studies/Graduate Gender Program at Utrecht University. She studied English and Commonwealth Studies at the University of Bologna (Italy) and University of Sussex (UK). Her expertise is gender and postcolonial critique from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. Her research areas include postcolonial studies, transnational feminist theories, comparative literature, Italian colonial history, European migration studies, visual culture, postcolonial cinema, media and conflict studies.
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Dr. Eva Midden
Eva Midden is Assistant Professor in Gender Studies, at the Media and Culture Studies Department, at Utrecht University. She has a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Leiden (Netherlands) and a PhD in Philosophy (University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom). Midden’s current research focuses on gender, religion and national identity in the context of conversion to Islam. Her general research interests include feminists theory, postcolonial theory, intersectionality, (post)secular(ism), whiteness and media analysis.
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Dr. Domitilla Olivieri
Domitilla Olivieri is Assistant Professor at the department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. Domitilla is an anthropologist, activist, researcher and teacher in the field of gender studies, media and society. She is active in academic, artistic and activist spaces and has been involved for many years in feminist, queer and anti-racist and anti-capitalist militant activism.
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Dr. Kathrin Thiele
Kathrin Thiele is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University.
She is the scientific director of the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University, the Utrecht coordinator of GEMMA, the Erasmus Mundus joint degree in Gender and Women’s Studies in Europe and the scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies
Trained transdisciplinarily in Gender Studies, Sociology, Literary Studies and Critical Theory, her research engages with questions of critical inquiry, ethics and politics from queer feminist, decolonial and posthuman(ist) philosophical perspectives. Dr. Thiele has a NWO-Aspasiapremie (2016-2022): Relation(al) Matters – Towards a Queer Feminist Cosmopolitics.
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Associate Prof. Koen Leurs
Koen Leurs is Assistant Professor in Gender and Postcolonial studies at the Graduate Gender Program, Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. He works on digital migration, and he is the principal investigator of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research-funded study “Young Connected Migrants. Comparing Digital Practices of Young Asylum Seekers and Expatriates in the Netherlands,” and the Dutch National Research Agenda funded participatory action research project “Media literacy through Making Media: A Key to Participation for Young Newcomers.”
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Dr. Layal Ftouni
Layal Ftouni is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at the Graduate Gender Programme, and a research affiliate at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht University. As a core faculty member, Layal teaches variety of courses in Gender Studies and supervises dissertations on MA, RMA, and PhD levels. Layal’s research and teaching is transdisciplinary. She works across the fields of gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, political philosophy, visual studies and critical race studies. Layal is currently working on a new research project (2020-2024) funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) tentatively entitled Ecologies of Violence: Affirmations of Life at the Frontiers of Survival. The research explores the politics of life and living at the boundaries with death (both human and environmental) in conditions of war and settler colonialism, focusing on Syria and Palestine.
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Dr. Magdalena Górska
Magdalena Górska is Assistant Professor at the Graduate Gender Program, Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. She holds doctorate in philosophy from the Department of Thematic Studies – Gender Studies at Linköping University. Magdalena’s research focuses on feminist politics of vulnerability. She is the author of Breathing Matters: Feminist Intersectional Politics of Vulnerability and a founder of the Breathing Matters Network.
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Dr. Gianmaria Colpani
Gianmaria Colpani is a Lecturer at the Graduate Gender Programme. He obtained his PhD in Philosophy and Gender Studies at the University of Verona (Italy) and Utrecht University (the Netherlands) in May 2017. His research concerns contemporary transformations in the field of queer theory and sexual politics, especially as the latter intersect with issues of race and class. He is particularly interested in the emergence over the past twenty years of the theorico-political currents of queer Marxism, queer of color critique and queer diasporic critique. Additional interests are: the history of the field of cultural studies and the relations between Marxism and so-called post-Marxism.
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Dr. Milica Trakilovic
Milica Trakilovic is a teacher at the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University. She is also the coordinator of the minors Gender Studies and Postcolonial Studies. She obtained her PhD at Utrecht University and her PhD research involved a critical interrogation of the idea of Europe from so-called marginal and marginalized positions, motivated by an understanding of belonging and nationhood in general, and Europe and Europeanness in particular, as a complex set of discursive practices that have material effects. Her research interests focus on postcolonial and postsocialist transitions and issues of European nationhood and belonging, as well as visual culture and feminist art practice.
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