GEA Conference 2024

Announcing the 20th Gender and Education Association international conference hosted by Charles Sturt University in Australia!

Conference Website

For more details and up to date information, visit the GEA conference 2024 website: http://csu.edu.au/gea2024

For questions about the conference, please email GEA2024@csu.edu.au

Conference Dates

Pre-conference Day: Student/ECR Workshops and Teachers’ Symposium –
Monday 17 June 2024 to be hosted/sponsored by Charles Sturt University Division of Learning and Teaching, and the Charles Sturt University Research Office

Conference Dates: Tuesday 18 June to Thursday 20 June 2024

Call for Abstracts

The Gender and Education Association (GEA) Conference 2024 seeks to bring together education practitioners from all levels of education, activists, academics, students, community members and leaders, artists, researchers, lawmakers, policymakers, and media to explore the need for change for diversity and inclusion, positionality, and redressing inequalities through both an intersectionality and a gendered lens.We invite contributions in a range of diverse formats including (and not limited to) 20-minute oral presentations, posters (digital and onsite), roundtables, themed panels, symposia, workshops, creative presentations and ‘other,’ which will be led by the abstracts received.

Call for abstracts EXTENDED to 9 February 11.59pm AEDT

Please download and share the Call for Abstracts flyer

Submit your abstract online

Conference Theme: Be the Change

The Gender and Education Association 2024 conference seeks to bring together education practitioners from all levels of education, activists, academics, students, community members and leaders, artists, researchers,
lawmakers, policymakers, and media to explore the need for change for diversity and inclusion, positionality, and redressing inequalities through both an intersectionality and a gendered lens. Engaging in the debates of inclusion in education is important but pivotal are the pedagogies and ideologies that underpin how we include and reframe the systemic and structural barriers that led to culminative disadvantage. Given the global impact of the pandemic with women being hardest hit with career stability and access to education and services, a call to action is needed to go beyond a deficit model to that of universal inclusion – designing education and pedagogy to be inclusive and accessible to all regardless of ones identified intersections. Our conference theme, Be the Change, aims to be a catalyst for discussion and action to redress global and institution inequality through the power of education and knowledge.

  • Be the Change, in understanding that individuals have agency within organisations and society to influence systems and structures that impact on education across the globe.
  • Be the Change, is understanding your own intersections and identities and how these impact on an individual’s positionality and interface with educational, political, economic, and societal systems.
  • Be the Change, is acknowledging how lived experience can give to voice and activism for change for the greater good in overcoming inequality and utilising education as a powerful tool
  • Be the Change, is delivering innovation through codesign for more inclusive and accessible education.
  • Be the Change, is acknowledging we all have a part to play

Themes which could be explored include (but are not limited to):

  1. What are the big questions and issues that need tackling?
    a. Local, national, and global inequalities in education
    b. Access and success (attrition and progression) in education
    c. Inequalities across different contexts, geography, and levels of education
    d. Employment in education – inequalities, marginalisation, and resilience in education
  2. One size doesn’t fit all
    a. First Nations perspectives to education
    b. De-homogenising the majority
    c. Taking an intersectional approach
  3. Progressive a/genda(er)
    a. Social justice, human rights and education
    b. Gender identity and gender expression in and for education
    c. Ethics of exclusion – refugees, displaced persons, and environmental refugees – access and surveillance of educational freedoms, Faith and Islamophobia, antisemitism, and religious intolerance in education
    d. Classism, ableism, and racism in education
    e. Making the invisible visible – Disability, neurodiversity, and mental health in education
  4. Innovation and creation of pedagogy for inclusion
    a. creativity in a gendered/non-gendered environment
    b. use of alternate creative media, music, art as a knowledge broker
    c. Universal design in education
  5. Practice translation for impact
    a. Case studies
    b. Systemic and structural change for inclusion
    c. Initiatives for change
  6. Being the voice of change – new developments and future facing research/action
    a. Decolonialisation
    b. De-whitening intersectionality
    c. Feminism and anti-oppressive strategies in education
    d. Activism

We will invite contributions in a range of diverse formats including (and not limited to) 20-minute oral presentations, posters (digital and onsite), roundtables, themed panels, symposia, workshops, creative presentations and ‘other’ which will be led by the abstracts received.

Read the Charles Sturt University press release about the conference.

Conference Co-Chairs

  • Associate Professor Cate Thomas School of Social Work & Arts, Athena Swan Convenor
  • Kate Wood-Foye, Director External Engagement Charles Sturt University (Port Macquarie)

About GEA Conferences

This will be the first GEA conference since 2019 after the pandemic disrupted the amazing plans for the 2020 conference. If this will be your first GEA conference, then you can learn more about the previous 19 conferences here. You can also read reflections from previous conference attendees to learn more about what to expect at a GEA conference:

About The Gender and Education Association: GEA is a volunteer-led international intersectional feminist charity. Since 1997, our community of educators, researchers, activists, leaders, artists, and more have been working to challenge and eradicate gender stereotyping, sexism, and gender inequality within and through education. UK charity number: 1159145

About Charles Sturt University: Charles Sturt is Australia’s largest regional university. In 2021 the University recorded more than 40,000 students and approximately 2,000 full time equivalent staff. With predecessor institutions that date back more than 100 years, we are unashamedly a university of the land and people of our regions. Acknowledging the culture and insight of Indigenous Australians, we are privileged to have as our ethos the Wiradjuri phrase Yindyamarra Winhanganha. This phrase means the wisdom of respectfully knowing how to live well in a world worth living in. Together, we strive to bring this purpose to life through our everyday actions and work. From our courses and student experience, our research and industry partnerships, to our community engagement, social responsibility and sustainability initiatives, we strive to make a difference. Our ethos and values demonstrate our commitment to social justice, social equality, diversity, and inclusion. This is underpinned by policies and programs that support our students, staff and community. We are about creating a fair and inclusive environment in which students and staff of all backgrounds can flourish.

Charles Sturt is one of the first Australian universities to receive an Athena SWAN Bronze Institutional Award

  • We are Employer of Choice for Gender Equality from the Commonwealth Workplace Gender Equality Agency
  • We are ranked #1 in Australia for undergraduate employment with eighty-five per cent of undergraduates finding a job in their field within four months of graduation
  • We are Australia’s first certified climate neutral university