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Multi-Layered Approaches: A conversation with Filmmaker Zuza Banasińska This podcast is a conversation between EUTERPE doctoral candidates Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Olga Fenoll Martínez and the transnational filmmaker Zuza Banasińska. Interested in the reproduction of images, systems, subjects and bodies, Zuza looks for ways to embody and queer existing archives. In this interview, they discussed their essay films, installations, multi-layered approaches that incorporate found and recorded footage, intricate ecosystems, and how they strive to interrogate and de-stabilise entrenched notions of identity, gender, and representation. The episode transcript can be accessed here . This episode is part of the EUTERPE Podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by: Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Olga Fenoll Martínez Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Angela Harris Sánchez University of Granada Researcher Angela Harris Sánchez holds a BA in Art history (Granada University), an MPhil in Art Therapy (Complutense University), the GEMMA double Erasmus Mundus Master and a double International PhD in Women's Studies, Discourses and Gender Practices (UGR) and Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (University of Bologna). She has been a National Research Fellow (FPU) and is now UGR-Postdoc and lecturer in the Archaeology Department. Publications: Queering Power: Affective Relational Anarchies, F(r)ictions and Disidentifications beyond Identity, Universidad de Almería, (2024). “Artherapy, Queer Failure and Horizontal Learning Experience in Students’ Postmemory Family Narratives” in Feminist Literary and Filmic Cultures for Social Action . Gender Response-able Labs. London and New York: Routledge (2024)

Ninutsa Nadirashvili Coventry University Doctoral Candidates Ninutsa Nadirashvili is a Georgian-American gender studies scholar, editor, and translator. She earned her bachelor’s degree in International Studies at Boston College and completed a dual master’s program in Gender Studies at the Universities of Utrecht and York. Since 2020, Ninutsa has been actively involved in NGO initiatives based in Georgia, collaborating with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Women’s Fund in Georgia, and the Equality Movement. In 2019, she spent a year working as an English teaching assistant through a program facilitated by Fulbright Austria. In 2022, she completed a Fulbright research fellowship in Tbilisi, focusing on an intersectional analysis of Georgian literature and language textbooks. As a doctoral student joining the Centre for Global Learning at Coventry University in the U.K., Ninutsa explores how transnational texts have influenced the decolonization of Women’s and Gender Studies programs across Europe. Her research involves interdisciplinary feminist methods and methodologies, including curricula case studies, textual analysis of syllabi, interviews, and participant observation. Cnontributions: Review: Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . (London:Vintage, 2008). Nadirashvili, Ninutsa, and Katherine Wimpenny. 2025. "Maps and Fabulations: On Transnationalism, Transformative Pedagogies, and Knowledge Production in Higher Education" Social Sciences 14, no. 8: 453. Our Time in Utrecht: Transnational reflections. An Act of Life: Georgian Women’s Film and Being Human in Relation. 2025. Institute of Network Cultures.

Coventry University Katherine Wimpenny Principal Investigator Jaya Jacobo Researcher Suzanne Clisby Special Project Advisor and Supervisory Expert Advisor

A Conversation with Eugenia Seleznova In this episode, doctoral candidates Tamara Cvetković and Samriddhi Pandey interview Eugenia Seleznova, an author, researcher, and cultural manager from Ukraine. Currently, Eugenia is a PhD Candidate at Central European University, where she conducts a research on queer Ukrainian relationalities during the war. In conversation with Tamara and Samriddhi, Eugenia shares how the contexts of the post-Soviet, then revolutionary, and then, finally, wartime Ukraine have shaped her experience as an author, and directed her own shifts and transitions: between identities, regionalities, languages, genres, occupations — and ways to love and write. The conversation also touches on transnational and translingual experiences of writing through displacement, and on finding one's way as a "peripheral researcher" amidst the Western academia. The podcast transcript is available upon request. If you require a copy of the transcript please email seleznova_eugenia@phd.ceu.edu to request a copy. This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by Samriddhi Pandey and Tamara Cvetković . Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Doctoral Candidate 1 Host Institution: CEU PU Mobility Institution: University of Oviedo WP 1: Transnational turn in literary studies: Looking from Central and Eastern Europe Objectives: This individual research project belongs to the overarching research area Transnational women’s literature and its travels: points of entry and pathways, which brings together WP1 and WP2. In this framework DC1 will engage with larger questions of transnational feminist literary theory with an aim to explore impacts of transnational turn upon methods of literary interpretation (narrative methods, close and distant reading, content analyses). The research will focus in particular on specific problems of traveling concepts and traveling theories; problems of studying identities in literary texts; questions of multilingualism and literary translations. Doctoral Candidate 2 Host Institution: University of Oviedo Mobility Institution: CEU PU WP 2: Mapping the "strangeness of Europe" in transnational women's writing Objectives: DC2 will be researching the ways in which women’s writing in Europe, especially those following the routes of migration from Africa and the Caribbean (and, to a lesser extent Asia), produce transnational writing and offer an alternative, gendered and sometimes multilingual map of European cities and conviviality. Applying a framework adapted from postcolonial theory, gender studies and neo- cosmopolitan studies, and embracing the performative theories of literature as a world-making activity, the research will approach diasporic women’s texts and explore the extent to which migrants, refugees and “post-multicultural” writers may constitute today’s cosmopolitans and provide a “hinge” between national cultures and transnational perspectives (Sneja Gunew 2017). It will focus on how literatures produced in the territory of what Chris Rumford (2016) terms “the strangeness of Europe”, the multiple Europes in their “disconnected contiguity”, may create a new narrative of Europe and innovative genres and linguistic practices. Doctoral Candidate 3 Host Institution: University of Bologna Mobility Institution: University of York WP 3: Narratives of connections and complicities in women's transnational minor literary genres Objectives: Employing a diachronic perspective, the researcher will investigate repetitive patterns in women’s transnational culture(s). Moving from this approach, he/she will take into consideration minor genres, which have often become for women and marginal subjects narratives of connections, complicities, negotiations, practices of resistance and changes. These narratives will enable geographies of identity transgressing the traditional boundaries (individual, national and collective). DC3 will focus on minorities’ literatures, and hybrid genres such as utopia, dystopia, science fiction, and/as collective autobiography and intertextual connections between transnational women. Doctoral Candidate 4 Host Institution: University of Bologna Mobility Institution: University of Granada WP 4: Transnational genres: genre/gender crossings in translation and creative practice Objectives: DC4 will select a diverse range of primary texts and transmedia works that cross borders between cultural discourses and cultures but also between genres, genders, and forms. This will be supported by the Centre for Utopian Studies and stakeholders, creative industries outside UNIBO, ERT-national theatre Emilia Romagna, and the Gender Bender Festival for visual art and dance. Doctoral Candidate 5 Host Institution: University of Utrecht Mobility Institution: Coventry University WP 5: Moving perspective: the role of transnational literary intellectuals in shaping public debate around European belonging Objectives: DC5 will investigate the contribution of women-identified, transnational intellectuals and writers into shaping public reception and debate around European belonging and identification. The project will focus on transnational literature as multilingual literature informed by migrant and postcolonial experience. Through this lens, using literary methodology (reception analysis, discourse analysis, archival research methods, combinations of close and distant reading, comparative analysis) and drawing on feminist theory, intellectual history, postcolonial studies, migration literature, media studies and critical theory, ESR5 will cartograph the diverse literary production by established, but especially also minor transnational European writers based in the Netherlands, the UK and Italy. It will analyse how these works contribute to public debate, and how they operate across national borders, gender identities and languages in these three different contexts. Specifically, it will investigate through which media and public platforms (festivals, prizes, publishing industry) they impact, seeking to combine prominent and minor literary figures to assess the diversity of gendered transnational voices. How do these voices challenge geographical and temporal methodological nationalism and create a transnational and translocal sense of European belonging? How do they contribute to rewriting and expanding the European literary canon and to developing a new understanding of the politics of belonging in Europe? Doctoral Candidate 6 Host Institution: University of Oviedo Mobility Institution: University of Utrecht WP 6: The role of transnational literatures in the decolonisation of understanding of gender within the European academe Objectives: Drawing on interdisciplinary feminist methods and methodologies, including pedagogical and textual content analyses, curricula case studies, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with educators, students and transnational intellectuals in cross-European contexts, DC6 will investigate the ways in which transnational literatures (including text, novels, poetry, play texts, digital literary media) have influenced processes of pedagogical decolonisation within the teaching of Women’s and Gender Studies. The research asks to what extent transnational intellectuals and literatures that challenge thinking about European gender identities have been deployed to develop, extend and decolonise theoretical frameworks for rethinking politics of identity within interdisciplinary gender studies. Doctoral Candidate 7 Host Institution: University of Granada Mobility Institution: University of Lodz WP 7: Transnational literatures in the making: dialogues with film, social media, streaming platforms, performative arts and new literary genres Objectives: DC7 will be researching on the ways in which transnational narratives (and experiences) resonate, interpelate or enter into dialogue with other discursive forms of expression such as film, performative arts, social media initiatives, streaming platforms, electronic literature or slam literature. This involves translations across literatures and these different media as well as across different national contexts. Such processes are partly enabled by the broad accessibility of different technologies of communication (including film, social media or streaming platforms) as well as new literary genres and literary experiments (electronic literature, slam literature). These socio-cultural transformations facilitate transnational circulation of literary narratives, or of the content of literature, often creatively reworking them in the process. Doctoral Candidate 8 Host Institution: University of Lodz Mobility Institution: University of Granada WP 8: Intermedial diffusions: creative interfaces of transnational women's literature and the arts Objectives: The individual research project will focus on the inter- and transmedial diffusions of the experiences and narratives conveyed by the selected examples of transnational women’s literature and how these transformations are shaped by the shifts of national/cultural/social contexts. The special attention will be paid to the interfaces of literature and the arts. Taking a new materialist approach, the DC9 will focus on the complex intra-action between the form and content, exploring how the change of the medium affects the content of the narrative and vice versa—how the narrative co-constitutes the operations of the medium. The research will focus on how—through trans- and intermediality—the selected narratives of transnational women’s literature reach out to and engage broader audiences, and how they are reshaped once placed in new situations of communications and new national locations. This will contribute to developing a more thorough reflection on European identities and how they are negotiated on everyday basis in and across different national contexts. Doctoral Candidate 9 Host Institution: CEU PU Mobility Institution: University of Lodz WP 1: Transnational turn in literary studies: Looking from Central and Eastern Europe Objectives: DC9 will be researching on points of entry and pathways of transnational literature in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. A space where languages and literatures of numerous small nations traditionally coexisted and mixed in rich variety, CEE is an ideal laboratory to examine transnational encounters, transculturalism, questions of identity and border-crossing. The cultural specificities and symbolic significance of CEE as a specific cultural toponym in Europe have been widely addressed from the 1970s on. However, this scholarship is traditionally leaving out majority of women-identifies writers, being focused on canonical male authors. At the same time, the cultural position and the role of CEE in post-socialist times, and in particular in times of EU enlargement, with shifting geographic and symbolic borders, requires transnational perspective in addressing critically literary production in the region. Doctoral Candidate 10 Host Institution: University of York Mobility Institution: University of Bologna WP 4: Transnational genres: genre/gender crossings in translation and creative practice Objectives: DC10 (externally funded, recruited by partner YORK) will have three main objectives: 1. To build on Walkowitz’s notion of the “born-translated” novel and Preciado’s blending of gender and sexuality studies with migrant/multilingual literary studies in order to interrogate and reimagine the definition of translingual, border-crossing writing not merely as an aesthetic effect in transnational literatures but as a genre in its own right; 2. To deepen understandings of how multilingual and migrant writing shapes and is shaped by nuanced intersections of gender, language, culture, race, class, sexuality, and disability; 3. To experiment with practice-led research methods, using translation and various forms of creative practice (e.g. creative writing, performance, mixed-media artforms), alongside social science methods (e.g. interviews, focus groups), in order to develop innovative interdisciplinary methods for approaching border-crossing artworks that challenge and question existing conventions in literary scholarship. Externally funded ESR10 will select a diverse range of primary texts and mixed-media artworks that cross borders not only between languages and cultures but also between genres, genders, and form. They will be supported by YORK’s interdisciplinary expertise, networks, and facilities for the study and practice of social science and artistic research methods. Furthermore, the Department of English & Related Literature will provide networks and training in translation, creative writing, and the creative industries. Doctoral Candidate 11 Host Institution: Coventry University Mobility Institution: University of Utrecht WP 6: The role of transnational literatures in the decolonisation of understanding of gender within the European academe Objectives: Drawing on interdisciplinary feminist methods and methodologies, including pedagogical and textual content analyses, curricula case studies, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with educators, students and transnational intellectuals in cross-European contexts, externally funded DC11 will investigate the ways in which transnational literatures (including text, novels, poetry, play texts, digital literary media) have influenced processes of pedagogical decolonisation within the teaching of Women’s and Gender Studies. The research asks to what extent transnational intellectuals and literatures that challenge thinking about European gender identities have been deployed to develop, extend and decolonise theoretical frameworks for rethinking politics of identity within interdisciplinary gender studies.

Ninutsa Nadirashvili Ninutsa Nadirashvili is a Georgian-American gender studies scholar, editor, and translator. She earned her bachelor’s degree in International Studies at Boston College and completed a dual master’s program in Gender Studies at the Universities of Utrecht and York. Since 2020, Ninutsa has been actively involved in NGO initiatives based in Georgia, collaborating with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Women’s Fund in Georgia, and the Equality Movement. In 2019, she spent a year working as an English teaching assistant through a program facilitated by Fulbright Austria. In 2022, she completed a Fulbright research fellowship in Tbilisi, focusing on an intersectional analysis of Georgian literature and language textbooks. This year, as a doctoral student joining the Centre for Global Learning at Coventry University in the U.K., Ninutsa will explore how transnational texts have influenced the decolonization of Women’s and Gender Studies programs across Europe. Her research will involve interdisciplinary feminist methods and methodologies, including curricula case studies, textual analysis of syllabi, interviews, and participant observation. Vision Statement I am a first-generation Georgian-American. This background has informed my undergraduate and graduate work in comparative literature and film analysis, which I paired with theories on anti-colonialism, nationalism, social reproduction, and representations of humanness. I intend to maintain this perspective as I begin my PhD studies at the Centre for Global Learning. Research topic “The role of transnational literatures in the decolonisation of understanding of gender within the European academe” Drawing on interdisciplinary feminist methods and methodologies, including pedagogical and textual content analyses, curricula case studies, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with educators, students and transnational intellectuals in cross-European contexts, this research will investigate the ways in which transnational literatures (including text, novels, poetry, play texts, digital literary media) have influenced processes of pedagogical decolonisation within the teaching of Women’s and Gender Studies. The research asks to what extent transnational intellectuals and literatures that challenge thinking about European gender identities have been deployed to develop, extend, and decolonise theoretical frameworks for rethinking politics of identity within interdisciplinary gender studies. Research interest list Feminist storytelling; contemporary cultural theory; relationalities; anti-colonialism; migration and nationalism; film studies; poetry; queer theory; literary and critical theory. Previous Next

Séamus O'Kane Séamus O’Kane is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Granada and his mobility period will take place at the University of Lodz. He holds an MA in Humanities from TU Dublin and he is also a graduate of the Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Children’s Literature, Media and Culture (CLMC). As part of this programme, he completed an internship researching digital literature for children for the Bibliotheek LocHal, Tilburg, and wrote a thesis on transmedia narratives at Aarhus University. His current research continues his interests in digital literature, adaptations and transmedia narratives. He will analyse a range of media to investigate discourses of communications technology, new media and the mediated world, and how these interrelated phenomena impact upon interpersonal relationships, selfhood and agency in transnational women’s literature. Research topic “Transnational literatures in the making: dialogues with film, social media, streaming platforms, performative arts and new literary genres”. Previous Next

Team Coventry Katherine Wimpenny Principal Investigator Katherine Wimpenny, PhD, MA, DipCOT, CertEd, is a Professor of Research in Global Education at the Research Centre for Global Learning, Coventry University, UK. She is the Theme Lead for ‘Education without Boundaries’ and has 24+ years of experience in higher education research and practice. Katherine’s research with colleagues, locally and globally, is grounded in comprehensive internationalisation, emphasising inclusive pedagogies, interdisciplinarity, social justice, decolonisation, and the role of the ethically engaged university. Her research considers a diversity of learning spaces (digital, face-to-face, blended, formal, informal, and non-formal) that interweave to impact educational opportunities that can connect international learning communities and the university to its locale. She is experienced in a range of approaches to inquiry, including Qualitative Research Synthesis, Arts-Based Educational Research, Participatory and Action Research, Appreciative Inquiry, and Transdisciplinary Feminist Research, including Post Qualitative Inquiry. Jaya Jacobo Researcher Jaya Jacobo is a transfeminine thinker and artist based at Coventry University where she currently does work on trans feminist pedagogies in literature, art and performance. She has worked alongside travesti and transsexual women artists, scholars and community workers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as well as with trans, queer and nonbinary Filipina/x/o performers from the Philippines and Filipino diaspora abroad. Jacobo was a former Board Member of the Society of Trans Women of the Philippines (STRAP), a former President of the Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle (YCC) of the Philippines, a Founding Co-Editor of Queer Southeast Asia: A Transgressive Journal of Literary Art and Co-Editor of BKL: Bikol/Bakla, Anthology of Bikolnon Gay Trans Queer Writing . Jaya is the author of Arasahas , her debut volume of poetry in Filipino from Savage Mind Publishing House. Suzanne Clisby Employability Mentor Suzanne Clisby (FRSA) is Professor of Education and Social Justice at the University of Lincoln with longstanding experience and expertise in academic research and leadership, teaching and authorship. She has conducted over 15 research projects, totalling circa. £8m and has trained numerous scholars in feminist methodological approaches and qualitative methods. She provides expertise in gender analyses, participatory development, life history narrative methods and creative praxis across a range of academic and NGO contexts, including a University of Iceland/UNESCO international fellowship programme. Professor Suzanne Clisby was the UK PI of the Horizon Europe European MSCA EUTERPE project (2022-24) and continues to work closely with the EUTERPE Consortium as a Special Project Advisor, Supervisory Expert Advisor (Coventry) and Employability Mentor (Granada). Professor Clisby was the Co-Director of the UKRI GCRF Global Gender and Cultures of Equality  (GlobalGRACE) Project (2017-2022), PI and Director of the Horizon 2020 MSCA Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe (GRACE) Project (2015-2019), and, for over a decade, Co-Editor of the Journal of Gender Studies. Her research focuses on gender, education and development. Her publications and edited collections include Gendering Women: identity and mental wellbeing through the life course  (with Holdsworth, 2016, Policy Press), in which she provides a materialist feminist analysis of the symbolic, structural and visceral violence of everyday encounters with constructions of gender; The State of Girls Rights in the UK  (with Alsop, 2016, New Internationalists Publications); Theorising Cultures of Equality  (with Johnson & Turner, 2020, Routledge); Gender, Sexuality and Identities of the Borderlands: Queering the Margins  (2020, Routledge); Investigating Cultures of Equality (with Golańska and Różalska, 2022, Routledge); and Performing Cultures of Equality (with Durán-Almarza and Rodríguez-González, 2022, Routledge).

Suzanne Clisby Coventry University Special Project Advisor and Supervisory Expert Advisor Suzanne Clisby (FRSA) is Professor of Education and Social Justice at the University of Lincoln with longstanding experience and expertise in academic research and leadership, teaching and authorship. She has conducted over 15 research projects, totalling circa. £8m and has trained numerous scholars in feminist methodological approaches and qualitative methods. She provides expertise in gender analyses, participatory development, life history narrative methods and creative praxis across a range of academic and NGO contexts, including a University of Iceland/UNESCO international fellowship programme. Professor Suzanne Clisby was the UK PI of the Horizon Europe European MSCA EUTERPE project (2022-24) and continues to work closely with the EUTERPE Consortium as a Special Project Advisor, Supervisory Expert Advisor (Coventry) and Employability Mentor (Granada). Professor Clisby was the Co-Director of the UKRI GCRF Global Gender and Cultures of Equality  (GlobalGRACE) Project (2017-2022), PI and Director of the Horizon 2020 MSCA Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe (GRACE) Project (2015-2019), and, for over a decade, Co-Editor of the Journal of Gender Studies. Her research focuses on gender, education and development. Publications: Gendering Women: identity and mental wellbeing through the life course  (with Holdsworth, 2016, Policy Press) The State of Girls Rights in the UK   (with Alsop, 2016, New Internationalists Publications) Theorising Cultures of Equality  (with Johnson & Turner, 2020, Routledge) Gender, Sexuality and Identities of the Borderlands: Queering the Margins  (2020, Routledge) Investigating Cultures of Equality (with Golańska and Różalska, 2022, Routledge) Performing Cultures of Equality (with Durán-Almarza and Rodríguez-González, 2022, Routledge).

“Use the Words You Have to Get the Words You Need” with Kimberly Campanello This lecture is dedicated to the memory of Susan Stanford Friedman. Susan Stanford Friedman's work was seminal for the conception of EUTERPE, and we deeply grieve her passing. She was not only a highly respected and influential scholar, but also a special friend known for her warm personality and intellectual generosity. This lecture series was created in her honour, to celebrate her legacy and to keep her presence alive. This episode features a lecture given by Kimberly Campanello, which weaves together her recent published and unpublished writing and her reading in neuroscience and literary criticism, including Susan Stanford Friedman’s writing on H.D., who has significantly influenced Campanello's work. During the performance-lecture, the audience participated in a multilingual circumlocution activity, the prompts for this activity are included in the accompanying lecture slides for listeners who would like to follow along. Kimberly Campanello is a poet, performer, and writer, and a professor of poetry at the University of Leeds. The performance-lecture includes an introduction given by Nicoletta Asciuto, a Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of York, translator, and co-investigator at York for the EUTERPE consortium. This lecture was originally delivered on 20/04/2025 at the fourth biannual EUTERPE Doctoral School, held at the University of York in York, United Kingdom. The accompanying slides can be accessed here . The slides include the full titles of work by Campanello and others that are featured or referenced in the lecture. Campanello’s “Paradiso 4” from “Beginning Imperfectly Wanting,” Book 1 of This Knot: a new version of Dante’s Commedia with the Poet K , dedicated to Nicoletta Asciuto, Bobby Alexandrova, and Alice Flinta, can be read here . Excerpts of this work were read by the poet during the lecture. The episode transcript can be accessed here . Please note that due to the performance aspect of the lecture some parts of the audio may be less clear than others. For more information on Kimberly Campanello’s events and publications, see her official website https://www.kimberlycampanello.com/ . This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was edited by Evangeline Scarpulla. Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers. Photo Credit: Olivia Braggs.

Our Time in Utrecht: Transnational Reflections Authors: Anna Hulsen, Franka Stauber, Giada Quaranta, Marta Scalera, Stella Ivory, Viola Ruggieri, and Ninutsa Nadirashvili What you see here is a collaborative collage and a co-written creative reflection made with love by the seven of us – transnational students who found each other during a fall semester at Utrecht University. Setting off on an adventure is never easy. It is scary, troubling, and, quite frankly, one of the most excruciatingly hard things to navigate. You face the unknown, the void, you close your eyes and jump. It’s a leap of faith. The first months in Utrecht have been brutal. Battling bureaucracy and the weather of doom? Not for the weak. Adjusting to an entirely different academic system? A game of survival. And yet, it is among the difficulties, the tears, and the ‘I can’ts’ that I have found community, care, and solidarity. Looking back on this past year as a transnational student, I realize that the initial and apparent glamour of living abroad has faded. There’s something deeply tiring about having multiple nests, multiple homes scattered across different places. Of course, there is a significant degree of privilege in living abroad, but once the excitement of a new adventure wears off, you are left facing a new language, new people, and a new bureaucracy (and yes, Dutch bureaucracy can be truly exasperating). The months I spent in Utrecht felt a little like sinking into dark blue water. It was a time of vulnerability. Being in the classroom felt both frightening and safe. Much of the study material, like the university system, was new, heavy, and exposing. I felt vulnerable in the academic environment: I wasn’t used to speaking so much, to writing, and being read. I felt that it was expected to explain where we come from, what our families are like, what kinds of chosen families we are building, and where. In the gender studies classrooms, I searched for a space to listen, read, and learn from those who live, and have lived, under fire. I found a space for grief and reflection, but also a space of comfort and privilege. Studying gender in Utrecht felt like watching a long, beloved film that makes you cry every time – one that connects you to pain, but in a place where you’re allowed to feel it. Being open to intimacy and risking being wounded is one of the most difficult but bravest things one can do nowadays. Making yourself vulnerable in a world driven by toxic, painful, and harmful systems that drain and decelerate you requires a lot. Though over and over again, community and companionship pushed me through the systemic sludge that was aiming to make me feel miserable in Utrecht. Looking for and finding genuine connection with people was the bridge I needed when coming to Utrecht and finding myself in a random place I should call home out of nowhere, in the middle of a breakup and a horrendous global political climate. Staying soft in hard times has been a life goal of mine for a long time now, but this last year has reminded me yet again that it is not possible to stay soft with oneself without intimate friendships that hold, balance and catch you. Tough times can’t be dealt with on your own. And there were a lot of tough times, believe me. This work required a reconfiguration, but for long stretches in the Netherlands winter, we couldn’t find our way through. We were trapped in the density of texts, in the thick raindrops made bigger through the impact and speed of our bikes, in a constantly shifting social and political landscape in our classroom, amongst our peers, and beyond. We huddled, stuck in confusion and sticky with commiseration for months. The world is on fire, but the master's tools will never dismantle the master’s house, so what do we do with these words? A constant questioning that our teachers failed to answer, if they even listened to hear us ask. Important liberatory theories stretched above us, out of reach, eluding any application in our bodies or on the earth. As a Gemma, I felt accepted by other GEMMAs and part of the community, but there was the lingering feeling that I was still on my own because everyone had different countries, classmates, teachers, and courses. It feels a little cringy to even write this out, but I was so angry all the time. I think I was flying in rage, constantly, and I wanted to land so badly it made my soul ache. No wonder then that my semester in Utrecht was painful. I smoked more cigarettes than I should have and walked up more stairs than my body was willing to. The wind routinely cut through to my bones; the rain drenched those cuts like alcohol thrown onto a fire. And the protests, and the encampments, and the lecturers complaining about students missing class. Weren’t they angry, too? I kept thinking. Why weren’t they also shooting up, high with rage over the flat landscape of the Netherlands? At first glance, this picture of two figures putting on their rain jackets in our collage is nothing but an unsuspecting moment of shared routine (although I’ll admit it has caused a hysterical amount of giggles) that could easily be washed away by the greater coming-of-age-movie kind of memories. And yet, the person who chose this picture saw in it something more: the promise of care. Helping each other weather the storm – a simple gesture, an act of care that tells you, “You do not have to face this alone” – you zip each other’s rainjackets up and up and away you go, a little bit warmer, a little bit stronger. When the glamour of the international experience begins to fade, something far more meaningful takes place: the deep bonds formed with those who truly understand your struggles – because they’re going through the same thing. And so, the glossiness is replaced by something warmer: regular coffee and croissants at “Vegitalia”, where you talk, vent, and comfort one another. You build a nest in this new country – a temporary one, because it is only a matter of time before you must leave and start building all over again. I often felt intimidated by others, and I felt certain that each person, though it takes a great deal of privilege to get there, was guided by a fire inside, a story that deeply motivated them to arrive in that classroom. I think I’m still intimidated by the reasons behind the fire inside me, but I know that this fire is alive. Riding my bike on cold nights to find a warm place where we could share and embrace that mixture of rage, fear, and the desire to build something was essential for me. To me, Utrecht felt like dark blue water, but also like a warm room. I see myself searching for markers on a Saturday night, knowing that even in a new city, there was a house where I could be welcomed. Now those memories feel farther away. Summer is over. I don’t know what our families look like today, or where the connections we built are going. What was that summer for us? And where, now, do we find space to grieve those who did not survive the summer under fire? Oh, I can’t count the times I was sitting at home, in my room, burning. Burning from anger, frustration, and sadness. But one person after another contributed their little, cooling drop of water to ease my fire, to gently restrict it, to channel it into motion instead of letting it numbly burn me. And for that, I am grateful every day. Grateful that I risked it. Grateful that I found personal, political, and spiritual intimacy that was worth every burn along the way! And who knows, maybe one day, we’ll master the flames and throw them right back at the injustices of the world. Together. Eventually, the light returned, and with cheap coffee (2 euros before 11 am, dankjewell), we got braver and found ways to loosen our focus on the imperfections in our writing and perspectives. When we laughed together, the lofty ideas dripped into our crevices and those between us, gradually saturating and permeating us. Despite the endless rain, a new world began to, at least, feel possible, as long as we had each other. It’s the memories with all of us that make this past year so special. In our group, we have grown closer, as friends, humans, and international students trying to navigate life with all its intricacies and hardships. We have shared tears, laughter, hugs, discomfort, joy, and so many more things. But this is why we made it through. Every class, coffee, and meeting at night was an experience of sharing how we felt. I learned how to feel with and through all of you. It is okay to sit with but also share my discomfort. There was so much frustration that we all shared the burden of, but also so many lovely moments, small or big, full of gentle kindness or much-needed life advice. But we are not alone in this, and we also do not have to be. Each of us is good enough with all our complicated, heavy, and happy moments and personalities. This is what spending time in Utrecht has shown me and what I will always treasure. We hugged each other in the damp, clutching onto our keffiyehs and knowing that was all we could do. I was furious. I had so much joy inside me, and I wanted to spread my arms wide and rise into the endless grey, radiant, toward the sun. Instead, I shook in the gales like a protest poster, begging for someone to do something. The only solace I found in this place that was not mine was the sight of you careening across the clouds with me, just as angry, just as tired. I knew you were also full of joy, with it nowhere to go, being choked by everything, everything. I could reach out, hold your hand, and bat my wings a little harder. So maybe you could rest for just a second. Works cited in our collage Angelou, Maya. “Alone.” Poem. In Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well. Random House, 1975. Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Preface: (Un)natural bridges, (un)safe spaces.” In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. Edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating. Routledge, 2022, pp. 1-5. Blofeld, John, trans. I Ching: The Book of Change. London: Mandala, 1978. Davenport, Michael A. “3,090 Degrees Fahrenheit.” Oil on canvas, 2025. https://michaeladavenport.art/paintings/ Ferrante, Elena. My Brilliant Friend: The Four Volumes. Translated by Ann Goldstein. London: Europa Editions, 2025. Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation . Translated by Betsy Wing. London: Penguin Books, 2025. Hobbs, May. Born to Struggle . Plainfield, Vermont: Daughters, 1975. Jansson, Lars. Moomin: The Complete Lars Jansson Comic Strip. Vol. 8. Montréal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2015. Mbaye, Aminata Cécile. Feminist Research Practice: Session 2 (Presentation). Utrecht. September 18, 2024. Minoliti, Ad. “Fantasias Modulares.” MASS MoCA | Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, March 9, 2021. https://massmoca.org/event/ad-minoliti-fantasias-modulares/ . Oliver, Mary. “When I Am Among the Trees.” Poem. In Thirst: Poems. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Pillow, Wanda. 2003. “Confession, Catharsis, or Cure? Rethinking the Uses of Reflexivity as Methodological Power in Qualitative Research.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 16 (2): 175–96. doi:10.1080/0951839032000060635. Putuma, Koleka. “Graduation.” Poem. In Collective Amnesia: Poems . Cape Town: uHlanga, 2019. Wynter, Sylvia. “The Pope must have been drunk, the King of Castile a madman: Culture as actuality, and the Caribbean rethinking modernity.” In Reordering of Culture: Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada in the Hood . Edited by Ruprecht Alvina and Cecilia Taiana. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995, pp. 17-41. Zhadan, Serhiy. “So That’s What Their Family Is like Now.” Translated by Virlana Tkacz and Bob Holman. Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine , 2017. https://www.wordsforwar.com/so-thats-what-their-family-is-like-now .