Looking Forward
As part of our anniversary year in 2024, the Clayman Institute celebrates "50 Years of Looking Forward" with a look at our more contemporary events, conferences, and gender research projects.
Research focus
The Institute focuses research and programming efforts around a theme chosen by the current Barbara D. Finberg Director, leveraging each director’s expertise and disciplinary networks. The Institute’s current research agenda under Director Adrian Daub primarily focuses on gender-based violence and the persistence of gender and interrelated inequalities.
Current projects in progress include:
- Researching how non-disclosure agreements related to workplace harassment shape individuals’ emotional well-being, workplace experiences, and career outcomes
- Investigating how COVID-19 changed experiences of intimate partner violence and how care providers shifted their services in response
- Analyzing the social media response to sexual violence cases, and how different types of technology influenced viewer experiences and interpretations of the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial
- Interrogating #MeToo and historical memory by creating a large archive of letters sent to prominent public figures who have shared experiences of sexual harassment or violence
Events and outreach
Through numerous public events, the Clayman Institute brings together feminist scholars, activists, and writers to discuss contemporary issues through an intersectional lens. Stories and videos are available for most events. The Clayman Institute further meets its goal of translating gender research to broad audiences through a diverse range of communications channels, including the recently launched podcasts The Feminist Present and In Bed With the Right.
- With the periodic Jing Lyman Lecture, the Clayman Institute recognizes feminist trailblazers who contribute significantly to gender equality in their lifetime. A 2022 event featured abortion providers, and in 2024 Anita Hill was honored.
- Launched in 2019, the Clayman Conversations series already had reached 10 events and counting in 2023. Recent topics include "Why Indigenous Land Back is a Feminist Issue," "Criminalizing Pregnancy," and "The War on Drag."
- Two podcasts, the monthly Gender News e-newsletter, our annual upRising magazine, as well as social media channels and our website continue the outreach to Clayman Institute followers.
- Making a tremendous contribution to these efforts is our writer-in-residence Moira Donegan. In addition to teaching and moderating and planning multiple events, she participates regularly in the life of the Institute.
Making an Impact
Fellows and scholars from the Clayman Institute have gone on to leadership positions in academia, publishing, public policy, and private industry:
- Multiple past directors have established new Stanford research centers following their time at the Clayman Institute. Laura Carstensen founded the Center on Longevity; Londa Schiebinger is founding director of the Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering and Environment Project; and Shelley Correll established the Stanford VMWare Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab
- Numerous pathbreaking books were nurtured in the Institute’s former Visiting and Affiliated Scholars program, from Susan Faludi’s Backlash to Marilyn Yalom’s Birth of the Chess Queen (and numerous other titles) to Victorian Women: A Documentary Account of Women’s Lives in 19th Century England, France and the United States, co-edited by Erna Hellerstein, Leslie Hume, and Karen Offen
- Mentorship remains a key purpose of the Clayman Institute's work, with 171 Faculty Research Fellows and 114 Postdoctoral Fellows and Graduate Dissertation Fellows among our current and former fellows