A Three-Day online workshop, “Women Writing Pakistan: Gender in the South Asian Literary Landscape” organized by the Department of English, Female Campus (FC), IIU, in collaboration with Teesside University UK commenced here at female campus on Wednesday.
The workshop is designed to promote original new research on South Asian women’s writing and to advance the research careers of next-generation women scholars. The event uniquely combines specialist talks and workshops by leading researchers and writers with a dedicated programme of academic writing training, publishing and research funding, one-to-one mentoring and research networking.
Guest speakers of the workshop include Muneeza Shamsie (author of Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of Pakistani Literature in English and editor of And The World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women), Bushra Iqbal Malik (founder of Pakistan Women Writers’ Forum/Young Women Writers’ Forum), Dr. Salma Masood (Co-founder of Pakistan Women Writers’ Forum/Young Women Writers’ Forum) and Professor Shirin Zubair (Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore).
In addition to the training and development opportunities provided by the writing workshop, 25 ECR (Early Career Researcher) delegates have also been awarded one year’s free postgraduate membership of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association and one year’s free online subscription to the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. These benefits are designed to support their research and career development and to enrich their experience of the Writing Workshop.
Dr Munazza Yaqoob, Chairperson, Department of English (FC) extended gratitude towards Dr Rachel Carroll and Dr Madeline Clements, WWP Project Lead, UK for their cooperation including the entire financial support in the setting of Smart Classroom/Video Conferencing Room equipped with latest 24 PCs, 01 LED, networking and other facilities in the English Department (FC) and giving an opportunity to host a workshop which includes 3 speakers from the UK, 2 from Germany and 4 from different cities of Pakistan and 25 early career researchers from all over Pakistan.
The participants of the workshops said that the changing landscape of education and technology-based learning is now becoming a lively activity with the development of interactive e-learning educational strategy. Hailing the establishment of this first-ever fully equipped Smart Classroom by Dr Munazza Yaqoob in the Female Campus, they said it is a great step towards the development of online and blended learning model in the International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.