KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
 
 

Randi Rønning Balsvik

Randi Rønning Balsvik is a Professor of History at the University of Tromsø.  While her doctoral dissertation was on African politics (Ethiopia and the student movement under Heile Selassie), she has continued to combine her interest in African history and development with a dedication to the local and regional. Among other things is the history of her own hometown Vardø in the northernmost county of Norway, Finnmark.
 
 

Solveig Bergman

Solveig Bergman is a Research Associate and Lecturer in Sociology at Åbo Akademi University in Finland.  For four years she was Coordinator for Nordic Women´s Studies, a position funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers (1991-94), and which paved the way for the establishment of the Nordic Institute for Women´s Studies and Gender Research (NIKK) from 1995
 
 

Rosi Braidotti

Rosi Braidotti is Professor of Women´s Studies in the Arts Faculty of Utrecht University.  She is also the scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Women´s Studies and of the Expertise Centre Gender and Multiculturalism.  Braidotti has been very active in coordinating European women´s studies (cf. the ATHENA network and the NOISE exchange program). ´She has published extensively in feminist philosophy, epistemology, poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. Among her best-known publications is Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (1994).
 
 

Ariane Deluz

Ariane Deluz is a French-Swiss anthropologist who has her education from the Sorbonne and the University of Lausanne, now attached to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris as a director of research.  Her long and distinguished career includes journalism, the sociology of work and "national character", particularly in West Africa and South America.  Her research focuses particularly on such areas as religious, political and economic aspects, as well as using a psychoanalytical approach.
 
 

Nawal El Saadawi

Nawal El Saadawi is a novelist, psychiatrist, and writer who is often referred to as "the best known woman of the Muslim world".  As a result of her literary and scientific writings she has had to face numerous difficulties and even dangers in her life.  In 1972 she lost her job in the Egyptian government.  In 1981 President Sadat put her in prison, to be released one month after his assassination.  From 1988 to 1993 her name figured on death lists issued by some fanatical terrorist organizations, and the government closed several activities to which she was associated, among them the magazine Noon, of which she was editor-in-chief.  El Saadawi´s works have been translated into many languages all over the world.
 
 

Sandra Harding

Sandra Harding is a Professor of Education and Women's Studies at UCLA in the U.S.A., where she also directs the Center for the Study of Women.  She is a philosopher, and taught for two decades at the University of Delaware before joining UCLA in 1996.  She is the author or editor of ten books and special journal issues, including the classic The Science Question in Feminism (1986) and Is Science Multicultural?  Postcolonialisms, Feminisms and Epistemologies (1998).  Harding has lectured at over 200 universities and conferences in North America, Europe, South Africa, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Central America.  She has also been a consultant to several United Nations organizations.
 
 

Hanne Haavind

Hanne Haavind is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oslo, Norway.  Since the mid-seventies she has been involved in interdisciplinary feminist research.  Her own area of study is women and men in couples, the interconnections between love and power, the sharing of work in the family, and the significance of gender in the organization of care and the actual involvement in the raising of children.  Her current research focuses on how boys and girls in a multiethnic Norwegian neighbourhood develop and change from elementary school to junior high school.
 
 

Govind Kelkar

Govind Kelkar is an Associate Professor and Head of the Gender and Development Program at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Born and educated in India at the universities of Delhi and Lucknow, she has also studied in the USA (University of Michigan).  Her research interests include gender and technology, gender and environment, women and natural resources, gender relations in matrilineal communities, and indigenous women’s knowledge. Govind Kelkar is editor of the journal Gender, Technology and Development.  Among her publications are several books by Kali for Women and Zed Books.
 
 

Bracha Lichenberg-Ettinger

Bracha Lichenberg-Ettinger is an Israeli-French artist and a major feminist theorist in the field of psychoanalysis.  She was born in Tel Aviv and is currently working in Paris.  Lichtenberg-Ettinger has a Ph.D. in Aesthetics from the University of Paris VIII, a D.E.A. in Psychoanalysis from the University of Paris VII, and an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Her paintings have been exhibited in several major museums of contemporary art. Lichtenberg-Ettinger´s theory of the matrix suggests another pathway through current feminist debates within psychoanalytically informed theories of sexual difference.
 
 

Elisabeth Møller Jensen

Elisabeth Møller Jensen has been the Director of KVINFO, the Danish Centre for Information on Women and Gender, since 1990. KVINFO has been a major contributor to bringing women's politics and women's research into the forefront of the Danish cultural debate. She has also been a pioneer in the field of Nordic women's literary history and is Editor-in-Chief of the highly acclaimed 4-volume Nordic Women's Literary History.  Møller Jensen is a frequent contributor to several Danish national newspapers and a participant in radio and tv discussion programmes.
 
 

Michael Kaufman

Michael Kaufman is a founder and the international director of the White Ribbon Campaign, the largest effort in the world of men working to end violence against women.  He is the author of six books, including Cracking the Armour: Power, Pain and the Lives of Men, and a new novel, The Possibility of Dreaming on a Night Without Stars.  For the past 18 years he has worked as a writer and public educator on gender issues, giving talks and leading workshops around the world for communities, schools, teachers, NGOs, governments, companies and trade unions.  He is a past professor of York University in Canada.
 
 

Monica Kristensen

Monica Kristensen is a Cambridge graduate in glaciology who has among other things served as Director of the Weather Forecasting Office of North Norway. At present she is the Director of the King´s Bay Company, the Norwegian research institute based at Spitzbergen. Ten years ago she became world famous for her Antarctic expeditions when she became the first woman to head such a venture.
 
 

Zofia Kuratowska

Zofia Kuratowska is a former Polish Member of Parliament and Vice-Chair of the Senate who is now Poland´s Ambassador to South Africa.
 
 

Rigoberta Menchú Tum

Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a Guatemalan leader internationally known for her work in the promotion of the defence of human rights, peace and indigenous peoples’ rights.   She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, becoming the first indigenous and the youngest person ever to receive this distinction. Her autobiography I, Rigoberta Menchú, An Indian Woman in Guatemala, was published in 1993, followed by several of her texts and poems. Self-educated, she has received honorary doctorates from several universities, including that of the host institution of WW99, the University of Tromsø!
 
 

Irina Novikova

Irina Novikova is an Associate Professor of English Literature and Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Latvia.  She is involved in cooperation with the Kristiina Institute at the University of Helsinki, Finland, with NIKK (Nordic Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender Research) in Oslo, Norway, and with the Gender Studies Program of the Central European University at Budapest, Hungary.
 
 

Ragnhild Nystad

Ragnhild Nystad is Vice President of the Sámi Parliament of Norway/Sapmi. She is by training a nurse, and is now working as the manager of healthcare in Karasjok in Finmark. She has also studied Sámi. Since 1993 she has been a representative in the World  Council for Indigenous People (WCIP).
 
 

Frances Olsen

Frances Olsen of the UCLA School of Law is an internationally prominent activist-academic.  She has taught at many of the major universities of the world, including Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Tokyo.  She is a founder of American Feminist Legal Theory and has helped to establish feminist law in several other countries.
 
 

Nelly Oudshoorn

Nelly Oudshoorn is Professor of Gender and Technology at Twente University and a senior lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  Her main research interest is the mutual shaping of gender, science and technology, particularly with respect to medical and information technologies. She is the author of Beyond the Natural Body. An Archaeology of Sex Hormones (Routledge 1994).
 
 

Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo

By education a chemical engineer, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo has had a long and distinguished career as a politician, both in her home country of Portugal and internationally.  She was Prime Minister of Portugal 1979-80 and has in addition among other things served as a Member of the European Parliament.  She was also a member of the OECD Expert Group on Women and Structural Changes in the 90s.  Since 1992 she has been President of the Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life, and from 1998 a member of the Council of Women World Leaders.
 
 

Griselda Pollock

Griselda Pollock is a feminist art historian and Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art in the Department of Fine Art at the University of Leeds, UK. She is also director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, the Centre for Jewish Studies, and Graduate Studies and Research in Feminist Theory, History and Art.  Pollock has written extensively on the problematic of the feminine in the fields of social history of art, cultural and psychoanalytic theory.  Her most recent book is Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art Histories (1998).
 
 

Fakhra Salimi

Fakhra Salimi has an academic background from the Punjab University in Pakistan and the University of Oslo, Norway. Her studies include sociology, social anthropology and media and mass communication. Salimi has contributed to various publications in Norway and abroad, and has produced several audio-visual presentations. She has been active within the women's movement since the 70s, and has initiated a several projects related to gender issues. Salimi is currently the director of the MiRA Resource Centre for Black, Immigrant and Refugee Women in Norway.  She is also the editor of the first ever magazine on minority women in Norway, MiRA - Forum for Minority Women.
 
 

Berit Schei

Berit Schei is a medical doctor and a certified obstetrician/gynecologist who holds a Professorship in Women’s Health -- the first of its kind in Norway in a Faculty of Medicine -- at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.  In 1990 she did her Ph.D. on the effects of sexual abuse in marriage:  Trapped in painful love. Physical and sexual abuse by spouse - a risk factor of gynaecological disorders and adverse perinatal outcomes.  Schei has among other things been active as an educator and consultant for shelters for battered and raped women.  International assignments have included work in Southern Lebanon, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in Costa Rica, and as a WHO technical adviser on violence.  In 1997-98 Schei was a visiting professor (Atkinson Chair in Women’s Health Research) at the Centre for Research in Women’s Health at the University of Toronto, Canada.
 
 

Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva is a physicist and philosopher of science, based in India, but with a truly global range of activities and fame.  She is an indefatigable activist campaigning against free trade and globalized production.  In 1982 she established the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi, where she is Director.  Shiva is also the Science and Environment Adviser of the Third World Network and the Asia Pacific People’s Network (APPEN), associate editor of The Ecologist and a board member of a number of other national and international bodies.  Her books include Monoculture of the Mind, Biotechnology and the Environment; and Staying Alive:  Women, Ecology and Development.  In 1993 Vandana Shiva was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Prize.
 
 

Sinith Sittirak

Sinith Sittirak is a lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communications, Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand.  She is a feminist and environmentalist who has authored "Prostitution and Development in Thailand" in Gender and Development in Southeast Asia and ( in Thai) The Rise of Thai Television(1950-1957): Its Socio-Political and Economic Impacts on Thai Society.  Her most recent publication is Daughters of Development: Women in the Changing Environment (Zed Books 1998).
 
 

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University in New York,  but with a range of interests that move well beyond literature - into women’s issues, the Third World and development.  Her educational background is the University of Calcutta (B.A.) and Cornell University in the USA (M.A. and Ph.D.).  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is known both as a scholar of deconstructive textual analysis of verbal, visual and social texts, and as a global feminist marxist.   Her most recent book is Don´t Call me Postcolonial: from Kant to Kawakubo (1998).  Spivak also publishes and lectures in her native Bengali, and among her numerous current projects is translating for the definitive edition of the Selected Works of Mahasweta Devi.
 
 

Agneta Stark

Agneta Stark is a researcher working at the Stockholm University School of Business.  She is an economist and a feminist, whose book Halva makten - hela lönen  ("half the power - the whole (=equal) pay") from 1994  is one of her best-known publications.
 
 

Johanne Sundby

Johanne Sundby is a medical doctor with a specialty in OB/GYN, and a PhD in community medicine (1994). She has done extensive research into infertility in Norway and several African countries. She is a research fellow at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo.  Sundby has been an advisor for NORAD and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on many aspects of reproductive health policy, and has published three books on the topic. She coordinates health research programs in South Africa and Botswana.  Sundby was head of the Norwegian Commission for Women's Health that submitted their report to the Norwegian Minister of Health in January 1999.  She is interested in living conditions and women's health under special conditions like in the Arctic and Africa.
 
 

Marit Wiig

Marit Wiig is one of the managing directors of the Norwegian Employers´ Association (NHO), with a continuing interest in and a very varied career experience as a woman in leadership, in sports as well as in business management.
 
 

Kari Wærness

Kari Wærness is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Bergen.  She has been a pioneer in  research on women and the welfare state in Norway, and is particularly associated with such terms as the "rationality of care".
 
 

Berit Ås

Berit Ås is one of Norway´s best-known feminist pioneers both at home and abroad, with a career spanning almost three decades of feminist, left-wing and environmentalist activism.  By training a social psychologist, she has now retired from her professorship at the University of Oslo, but keeps working tirelessly for her chosen causes.  Berit Ås was a Member of Parliament in the 1970s and was the first woman to be a party leader in Norway (the Socialist Left).  She was also the founder of the Feminist University in Norway at Løten.  In her handbook in liberation Ås identifies what she calls the "five master techniques".  This will be one of the topics that she will lecture on at WW99.

Last updated: June 8 1999 Web Master