By Tonya Haynes

“What is Structural Violence?” is the fourth session in South Feminist Future’s Political Education series. This series is an initiative by South Feminist Futures that seeks to strengthen cross-regional, inter-generational dialogue and build a cross-regional feminist constituency. The series cuts through various topics to interrogate and strengthen understanding of issues shaping conditions in the Global South. 

“What is Structural Violence?” took place on the 1st of March and was taught by Professor Tonya Haynes. In this session, the speaker broke down the meaning of the term, what the concepts and theories are, how we can examine them and how they continue to manifest in not only the Global South but the world at large. 

Dr. Tonya Haynes is a lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies: Nita Barrow Unit (IGDS:NBU).  She holds a PhD in Gender and Development Studies from the University of the West Indies and was the first graduate of the Nita Barrow Unit’s PhD programme in 2012, proudly representing a new generation of homegrown Caribbean feminist scholars.

Dr. Haynes’ research is animated by the liberatory potential of Caribbean feminist thought.  Her research on Caribbean feminisms and Caribbean feminist thought is published in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, sx: archipelagos, Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies and Love and Power: Caribbean Discourses on Gender (edited by Eudine Barriteau). Her most recent publication, “Contradictory Consciousness: Activist Men and Feminism in the Caribbean,” appears in Unsustainable Institutions of Men: Gender Power and the Contradictions of Transnational Dispersed Centres edited by Jeff Hearn, Ernesto Vasquez del Aguila, and Marina Hughson.  Her research on gender-based violence is published in Global Public Health and Social and Economic Studies. She is currently working with Dr. Tami Navarro of Barnard Center for Research on Women on a Special Issue of The Scholar and Feminist Online, dedicated to Caribbean feminisms, which will be published in 2019.