Queering intimacies, families, and companionships. Workshop with Professor Kathryn Almack

The workshop is organized in cooperation with the Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters Research Community (BOMOCULT RC) at the University of Eastern Finland.

Welcome to join the open lectures on-site or on-line. Please find separate link for each session in the programme. For further information, please contact Postdoctoral researcher Annukka Lahti, annukka.lahti(at)uef.fi. 

Open lectures:

Wednesday, June 29th
12.30–14.00 Keynote 

Professor Kathryn Almack, University of Hertfordshire: “Revisiting lesbian parent families twenty years after first interviews: changing family lives over two decades”

Please join us in person or join Zoom meeting:
https://uef.zoom.us/j/62354057046?pwd=S3AwVllQYVNnektuZ21aalorblhaUT09
Meeting ID: 623 5405 7046
Passcode: 961121.

Professor Kathryn Almack is a family sociologist at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. She has particular research interests relating to the moral terrains and normative notions around families and relationships that people negotiate in their everyday lives. Kathryn is currently working on an English longitudinal study of lesbian parent families. She first interviewed 20 lesbian parent couples (who had planned and had their first child in the context of their relationship) in 1999-2001. Twenty years later, Kathryn retraced and re-interviewed 16 of these families – parents and some of the now adult children. The original study identified key questions about making sense of who counts as family across biological and social boundaries; how these boundaries are negotiated/narrated; how family is defined and enacted (by the lesbian parent couple but also considered wider kin networks and the role of the donor). The follow up study adds a longitudinal element to these questions. Additional dimensions to these questions come from couples separating and parenting across households. Those involved are navigating ongoing and new relationships within their family lives which represent a complex blend of genetic, social and legal connections that are perceived and negotiated differently by all those involved. These family stories challenge the conventions of the 'traditional' family, in particular the heterosexual and biological imperatives of reproduction, parenting and family life. Yet at the same time, they are nevertheless located within, and underpinned by, normative definitions and expectations of family life and parenthood. These accounts offer a new perspective to existing sociological debates about notions of family, which are subjected to processes of negotiation and re-definition over time and following separation.

Thursday, June 30th
10.00–11.00 Talk and discussion 

Professor Jaana Vuori, University of Eastern Finland: “Doing, experiencing, imagining, and framing intimacies, families and companionships – reflecting on conceptual and methodological dimensions”

Please join us in person or join Zoom meeting:
https://uef.zoom.us/j/69465809408?pwd=V3ZwdzM0Um9EY25Cc1lPaGlDVXBrZz09
Meeting ID: 694 6580 9408
Passcode: 891038.

14.00–15.00 Talk and discussion 
Postdoctoral researcher Annukka Lahti, University of Eastern Finland: “Queer un/becomings: posthumanising intimacies, families and companionships”

Please join us in person or join Zoom meeting:
https://uef.zoom.us/j/64604481693?pwd=cjVKeUFSRWFGSmJDRjRCOE1IUUdoZz09
Meeting ID: 646 0448 1693
Passcode: 486480.