Advancing scholarship on women
Professors M. Gabriela Torres and Kersti Yllo will lead the inaugural Campbell Advanced Seminar at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, N.M.—sharing their research on marital rape in a global context.
SAR, a center known for its anthropological and interdisciplinary research, chose the professors to lead the seminar through a competitive process. The SAR provides funding for all travel, housing and meals for the weeklong event, scheduled for fall 2018.
“Professor Torres and I are very excited to receive this recognition of our work and, especially, the opportunity to develop it further into policy and practice,” said Yllo, professor of sociology, emerita.
The professors are the first to lead this new seminar, which focuses on the circumstances of women in the developing world, and practical strategies for improving their health, prosperity and general well-being.
Four years ago, professors Yllo and Torres convened their first international meeting on marital rape at Wheaton, and in their research on the issue discovered that there was scarce scholarship on the topic of marital rape.
As a result, they published “Marital Rape: Consent, Marriage and Social Change in Global Context” (Oxford University Press, 2016); the seminar is intended to develop policies and practices that grow out of this research.
Torres says that the conference will allow the professors to collaborate with other scholars on providing real-world solutions to this complex issue.
“One of the most exciting aspects of this award is that it will enable us to work with scholars from the global south to think through concrete public policy applications to our research on marital rape,” said Torres, associate professor of anthropology.