December 2009

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AOIFE is a European association for Women's Studies based on institutional membership.
AOIFE is a structure which links institutions dedicated to initiating and supporting feminist education and research in Europe.
AOIFE is a forum for collectively addressing and acting on issues concerning Women's Studies by means of co-operation and networking.
AOIFE is a platform from which to submit carefully drafted applications for funding from the EU and other international organisations.

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ATHENA is a Socrates Thematic Network Project in which 80 Women's and Gender Studies Programmes at universities, research institutes and documentation centres in Europe participate. ATHENA was created in 1996 by the Association of Institutions for Feminist Education and Research in Europe (AOIFE), and was selected as a Socrates Thematic Network Project in September 1998. The ATHENA central coordination is located at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

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Background

The regional educational (institutional) context and needs for the gender/women’s/feminist studies:

As far as the gender/feminist studies education is concerned, a shared feature in the region of Southeastern Europe is its utter absence from the institutions of the official higher education. Or, in the brighter cases (e.g., the University of Sofia where there is an integral postgraduate program, or University of Skopje offering several courses), one can speak of this field’s radical marginality, consisting in a low position on the scale of power relations (poor funding, invisibility, etc.) In many countries of SEE, the feminist scientific and theoretical thought and the production of knowledge (including education) have functioned on an informal level, in alternative spaces and, by doing so, have represented an opposition – thus, alternative and supplement – to the formal higher education. Nevertheless, the official production of knowledge and of what is considered competent professional formation rigidly maintains its ban to – according the dominant discourses - the “non-scientific” gender studies: “non-scientific” since knowledge is still deemed to be irrevocably universal and, thus, genderless/sexless.