Bridging Worlds – Building Feminist Geographies

Abstract

The metaphor of a bridge connecting feminist scholarship across different worlds best describes the supportive figure Jan Monk has been to feminist geographers of different generations and social locations. Throughout, Jan worked to highlight women’s experiences and to foreground the lens of gender within geographical research and knowledge production. She was committed to supporting feminist geographers, introducing them to relevant networks, promoting their research, and advocating for their inclusion and recognition within international groups, universities, and other academic bodies. As part of her geographical engagement, Jan attended conferences and established institutional and personal connections with scholars, activists, and practitioners across the globe. Building connections with feminist geographers outside the Anglo-American world in Brazil, India, Taiwan, China, Japan, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya among others, Jan noted that “place matters, it is perhaps inevitable that where we are shapes our ways of looking at the world”.