ABOUT WESTERN

With an international reputation for success, Western ranks as one of Canada’s top research-intensive universities. Our research excellence expands knowledge and drives discovery with real-world application. Western also provides an exceptional employment experience, offering competitive salaries, a wide range of employment opportunities and one of Canada’s most beautiful campuses.

ABOUT US

The Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research has recently changed its name to the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GSWS). This new name better reflects the scope of our curriculum and research interests. It is a long time since the department’s focus was solely on women’s issues, so the name change reflects the development of the department’s research and teaching interests into the areas of gender, including trans and non-binary genders, and sexuality. It will also help students to better understand what the department does and what our courses are about and is more inline with provincial high schools’ offerings in Gender Studies. GSWS is a dynamic and interdisciplinary department that focuses on issues of social justice and equality. Our expertise encapsulates a wide array of strengths across feminist theory and various feminist approaches to health studies, media studies, history, globalization and development studies, critical race theory, philosophy, law, writing studies and literature, visual culture, as well as significant work in queer theory and sexuality studies. In our teaching and scholarship, we aim to cultivate engaged, informed, socially conscious citizens, able to constructively address issues of oppression, systemic and institutional disadvantages, and structures of privilege—often invisible—in the local and global society. We provide our students with the analytical and practical tools that enable them to engage critically and responsibly with the world, to interact respectfully with others, and to pursue a variety of career paths.

Required Skills:

• Knowledge of trauma-informed methodology and principles
• MA or Ph.D. in related field preferred
• Ability to organize and lead online training with survivors of war
• Workshop facilitation and data collection skills
• Data analysis and writing skills
• Familiarity and experience with community-based, participatory, collaborative and decolonial methodologies
• Capacity to produce community-focused book

This position calls for a P/T RA to work with Dr. Erica S. Lawson in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies who is the PI for a SSHRC-funded Partnership Development Grant (PDG) titled “Commemorating the Experiences of Liberian Women Survivors of Conflict Related Sexual Violence for Collective Healing.” The primary responsibility of the RA is to work with the research team, both at Western and in Liberia, to co-ordinate activities related to the completion of a community book.The book will focus on how women survivors of the Liberian civil war (1989-2003) understand and reflect on public commemoration of their wartime experiences.The RA will generally work remotely, and will also participate in in-person fieldwork trip to Liberia to complete this project. The activities involved are as follows: 1. Lead online discussions with participants; 2. lead in-person workshops with participants in Liberia; 3. Use collected information to co-design a community bookfor the project, and 4. Work collaboratively with select youth who live in the community to complete the project.

Required Skills:

• Knowledge of trauma-informed methodology and principles
• MA or Ph.D. in related field preferred
• Ability to organize and lead online training with survivors of war
• Workshop facilitation and data collection skills
• Data analysis and writing skills
• Familiarity and experience with community-based, participatory, collaborative and decolonial methodologies
• Capacity to produce community-focused books