The Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World (IWSAW) at LAU, in partnership with the Women and Memory Forum (WMF) in Cairo, and the Center for Gender Studies (CGS) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London recently hosted a workshop under the title “Gender Training for Iraqi Academics and Researchers.”

The ten-day workshop was hosted at LAU Beirut from September 17-26, 2012 and was attended by around 20 Iraqi academics and researchers from different fields. The program addressed critical, present-day issues such as feminism in the West, in the global South, and in the Arab world, feminist epistemologies and research methodologies, gender and literature, and gender and media studies.

The workshop helped the participants to develop proposal writing and research project development skills, while familiarizing them with regional and international debates and research on women and gender studies. It appealed to both Iraqi men and women, showing beyond doubt that women’s rights are first and foremost human rights.