2024-25 Global Speaker Series on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Inclusion
February 13 at 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Free
The UBC Faculty of Education Global Speaker Series on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Inclusion is an annual event that addresses some of society’s most pressing priorities by sharing and learning from stories from around the world.
Host
Join Dean Hare, an advocate for inclusive education, as she hosts Dr. Dennis Francis, a scholar, activist, and disruptor of cisheteronormativity. This event is made possible with the generous support of esteemed donor Dr. Robert Quartermain.
Distinguished Speaker
Dr. Dennis Francis (he/him) is a renowned South African scholar and activist specializing in the sociology of education with a focus on gender, sexualities, and educational practices. He is a former dean of education and currently serves as a professor at the University of Glasgow, UK. His research critically examines how educational structures, discourses, and practices reproduce and resist cisheteronormativity and social inequality in education, and how these are also resisted and challenged. Informed by queer feminist, critical, and poststructuralist theories, his recent books are Troubling the Teaching and Learning of Gender and Sexuality Diversity in South African Education and Queer Activism in South African Education: Disrupting Cis(hetero)normativity in Schools.
Q&A Moderator
Dr. Julia Sinclair-Palm (she/they), incoming Director of the forthcoming Robert Quartermain Centre for SOGI-inclusive Excellence in Education (RQCSIEE) will moderate the Q&A. Her research explores how young people forge new identities, imagine futures, and navigate structural inequalities within restrictive narratives about childhood and youth, providing a rich backdrop for this event’s dialogue.
Accessibility
The event will include a sign language interpreter.
Please contact communications.educ@ubc.ca for any additional accessibility needs.
Virtual Livestream
Registrants will receive the livestream link via email closer to the event day.
Questions
Please contact communications.educ@ubc.ca.
A cisgender person is someone whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth.
A heterosexual person is romantically / physically attracted to members of the opposite sex.
