Call for Papers
Many readers of Gender and Education will remember Diana Leonard, who died aged 68 on 27 November 2010, and most will be familiar with some aspect of her work. Diana was a supporter of, contributor to and long time editorial board member of the journal. She established the Centre for Research and Education on Gender (CREG) at the Institute of Education, London, in 1984, which was a hub of feminist educational thinking and activism for the next twenty years. Diana was also instrumental in establishing the Gender and Education Association, with which the journal is now linked.
She developed a materialist-feminist perspective applying it creatively to institutions such as the family, marriage, sexuality and education. Her educational studies spanned secondary, special and higher education, including postgraduate and doctoral studies. Her many and varied publications include the two edited volumes from the BSA conference in 1976; Familiar Exploitation (with Christine Delphy) (1992); A Women’s Guide to Doctoral Studies (2001); a prize-winning essay with Louise Morley and Miriam David (2003) ‘Quality and Equality in British PhD Assessment’ in Quality Assurance in Education. She was also a major contributor to the work of the Gender and Education Task Team, set up by the new South African government after the end of apartheid.
This special issue is intended not only as a tribute to her contribution to feminist educational thinking and activism but also to build on her work.
We would, therefore, welcome original empirically and/or theoretically-based articles on the key themes that engaged her:
• Feminist theorising and activism in and beyond the academy
• Family and marriage
• Single sex and coeducational schooling
• Higher education, particularly doctoral studies
• Schooling and masculinities
• Special education
• Education and development
• Global inequalities in higher education.
These articles should be about gender and education, broadly defined. We are not seeking articles that simply say her work was influential or wonderful or that engage in some kind of hagiography. Rather, we are seeking pieces that engage seriously with Diana’s work, whether they are in broad agreement or disagreement with it. Thus they should build on, argue with, and develop her contribution, reconsidering her analysis in the light contemporary developments in gender, sexuality, family relationships and or/education.
We would also welcome short pieces of no more than 2000 words, that explain, briefly, what the impact of Diana’s work has been on the author, whether they ever met her or not.
Finally, we would like to hear from Diana’s former doctoral students, even if they do not wish to contribute to the special issue, to find out what they are doing now as we wish to produce a ‘feminist tree’ showing where Diana’s doctoral students and, in turn, their doctoral students (and their doctoral students) are placed now.
Time scale
31 May 2011: Call for papers out in the journal and on the web.
31 August 2011: Long abstracts/outlines (up to a maximum of two sides of A4, double spaced) for original articles to Miriam David (m.david@ioe.ac.uk) and Debbie Epstein (epsteind@cf.ac.uk)
14 September 2011: Miriam and Debbie write back to authors with comments on the abstracts and explaining that the full article will still need to be reviewed and this is not a guarantee of acceptance
14 February 2012: Full papers submitted via Scholar One
14 March 2012: Reviewers invited
14 May 2012: Reviews returned, decisions made and authors informed. Only minor revisions to be for the SI, but articles with major revisions could be resubmitted for a regular issue of the journal
30 July 2012: Revised articles returned and read by Miriam David and Debbie Epstein and copy put together
September/October 2012: SI published
