Convenors
Dr Kate Antosik-Parsons
Kate Antosik-Parsons is a contemporary art historian and interdisciplinary scholar who writes about performance, politics, gender and embodiment. Kate is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Social Studies in the School of Social Work and Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin on the cross-border HEA-funded North/South Reproductive Citizenship project (2022-Present). Kate co-authored the Unplanned Pregnancy and Abortion Care Study (UnPAC) (2022). Prior to this, Kate collected eleven oral histories of performance artists working on the island of Ireland in the 1990s for NCAD’s contribution to L’Internationale’s ‘Our Many Europes’, deposited with the National Irish Visual Artists Library. More details here
Dr Emma Campbell
Emma Campbell is Research Associate, School of Applied Social and Political Science, and Lecturer in Photography, Belfast School of Art at Ulster University where she also completed her practice-based PhD addressing photography as an activist tool for abortion rights. She is 1/11th of the Turner Prize-winning Array Collective and has exhibited in international solo and group shows. Emma is the co-convenor of Alliance for Choice and a core campaigner since 2011. Most recent publication includes the Double Volume, Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland. For more details see Alliance for Choice / Array Collective / Ulster University
Guest Speakers
Ruth Fletcher
Ruth Fletcher is a Reader in Law at Queen Mary University of London. Her research lies at the intersection of legal humanities and socio-legal studies in taking a critical feminist interdisciplinary approach to the relationship between legal form and life’s reproduction. In 2022 she was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to work on Ordering Time: Periodic abortion law, gestational labour and reproductive justice. Ruth’s previous roles and projects have included editing Feminist Legal Studies, co-leadership of the AHRC International Network on ReValuing Care, co-directorship of the AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality, and a long history of participation, inside and outside the university, in the reproductive rights movement in Ireland and elsewhere.
Lisa Godson
Lisa Godson is a cultural historian and Programme Leader of the MA Design History and Material Culture at NCAD, a unique postgraduate programme run in partnership with the National Museum of Ireland. Her research interests include the material culture of ritual, ‘tropical’ modern architecture in West Africa, the history of medical devices and the material culture of Catholicism. She studied History of Art at Trinity College Dublin and History of Design at the Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum, London (MA, PhD).
Members of Array Collective
Laura O’Connor & Sinéad Bhreathnach-Cashell
Dr Laura O’Connor is a visual artist, researcher and festival co-ordinator based in Belfast. O’Connor’s work combines performance, sculpture, installation, video and digital media to look at the representation of “women” in the media and through cultural narratives. Recent works include Cultural Methods an ongoing project researching the digital surveillance of fertility and its links to cultural narratives and the treatment of reproductive autonomy in Ireland; Uncomfortable State (2017-2019) a series of live performances, sculptural works and video installations based around abortion rights in Ireland. O’Connor is also co-director of WANDA: Feminism and Moving Image, an organisation that exhibits moving image works by and about women and works alongside industry organisations and individuals to expose inequality and underrepresentation in the film industry.
Sinéad Bhreathnach-Cashell invites people to play. Building communities of practice, sharing spaces and getting together to do things has always been part of how she works. This kaleidoscopic practice includes interactive installations; performance art and curating. Reality sparks off an unknown alchemy of serious thoughts and fanciful imaginations. The results are rarely predetermined or understood by the artist, however the work is often absurd, brightly coloured and handmade. Her work is made possible by the generosity of family, friends, colleagues and strangers. Born and based in Belfast, Sinéad is a member of Bbeyond, the Array Collective and BBDB weekly zooms. She works as a curator for Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive, developing live cinema projects using the Ulster Television archive. Sinéad studied her BA Hons Fine and Applied Art in the Belfast Art College (Ulster University) and Post Graduate Studies in Art Room Methodology in Bath Spa University.
EL Putnam
Dr. EL Putnam is an artist-philosopher working in performance art and digital technologies. They are a member of the Mobius Artists Group (Boston), Bbeyond (Belfast), and the International Association of Art Critics. Exhibitions of note include the solo exhibition PseudoRandom at Emerson Contemporary in Boston, MA, USA (2023); the Research Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale; “Art Action” with Le Lieu in Quebec City, Canada (2018); “Digital Art in Ireland Exhibition” with Sample Studios at the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion in Cork (2022); and Living Canvas in Dublin (2022). Recent publications include the monograph The Maternal, Digital Subjectivity, and the Aesthetics of Interruption (2022) and the forthcoming Livestreaming: An Aesthetics and Ethics of Technical Encounter (2024). They have received funding from Culture Ireland, the Arts Council of Ireland, and Westmeath County Council. They are Assistant Professor in Digital Media at Maynooth University.
