Lorraine Dowler

My scholarship is rooted in a feminist approach to geopolitics that enables more fluid conceptualizations of compassion, identity, and individuality as related to understanding everyday life, private spaces, and the lives of women and other vulnerable groups. In my current research, I expand my initial question of a feminist geopolitics and draw on the literatures of feminist care ethics to examine the potential for a caring geopolitics in a world where hate fuels racist and xenophobic hate crimes; routinized forms of rape culture and the slow march of economic and political exploitation.

In addition to my research and scholarship, I am deeply committed to the University as a site of education to inform social change. I believe that education is a process where students can be empowered to act for social justice. In my classes on cultural, feminist, and political geography, I require that learners recognize the variety of different social locations, backgrounds, and interdisciplinary knowledges while treating one another with dignity, respect, and courtesy. In this sense, I view the classroom as a place of hope where students and teachers gain glimpses into possibilities and garner the tools to make them a reality.