Celebrating 10 years of the BELMAS Gender and Leadership Research Interest Group

On 24 May 2022, the Centre for Research in Educational Leadership and Management hosted a British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) event to celebrate 10 years (2012-22) of the BELMAS Gender and Leadership Research Interest Group (RIG).

The event provided an opportunity to listen to scholars of women, gender and feminism in educational leadership.

Dr Pen Mendonça’s keynote address was informed by her paper A Scarlet A-Line Skirt, Independent and Critical Visual Practice, and the Brit(ish)line: Representing Women’s Leadership in Education Through Values-Based Cartooning. This paper is in the collection Ways of Seeing Women’s Leadership in Education: Stories, Images, Metaphors, Methods and Theories.

There were also talks by RIG co-conveners: Dr Kay Fuller, Dr Victoria Showunmi, Dr Pontso Moorosi and Dr Saeeda Shah, about recent publications including:

• Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary Educational Leadership by Kay Fuller
• The Bloomsbury Handbook of Gender and Educational Leadership and Management co-edited by Victoria Showunmi, Pontso Moorosi, Charol Shakeshaft, and Izhar Oplatka
• Understanding and Managing Sophisticated and Everyday Racism by Victoria Showunmi and Carol Tomlin

The event was an opportunity to reflect on achievements in the last 10 years and to discuss what the RIG would focus on next.