The 2026/2027 reporting year for the CFR starts on May 1st 2026 and ends on April 30st 2027.
CFR Events at a Glance:
| Date | Title | Host | Speaker/s or Artist/s | Speaker's or Artist's Title & Institution | Speaker's or Artist's Country | Number of Attendees | Event Category | Event Type |
| June 24th 2026 | AI systems’ technical fairness measures from a feminist perspective | CFR | Anna Capellà Ricart | Institute of Law and Technology Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain | Spain | 8 | Talk | In-Person |
| June 19th 2026 | Vancouver Launch - Play Naked: Puta Economics Against Olympic Dispossession (MQUP 2026) | Upstart & Crow, CFR | Amanda De Lisio | Assistant Professor of physical culture, policy, and sustainable development in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University | Canada | 25 | Book Launch | In-Person |
| June 17th 2026 | Evasive Manoeuvres: Canadian Women’s Confessional Writing | Hot Docs, CFR | Myra Bloom | Associate Professor of English at York University | Canada | Conversation | In-Person | |
| June 10th 2026 | Toronto Launch - Play Naked: Puta Economies Against Olympic Dispossession, with informal conversation with Elene Lam and Simone Bohn | Another Story Bookstore, CFR, Faculty of Health, CITY Institute, CERLAC | Amanda De Lisio | Assistant Professor of physical culture, policy, and sustainable development in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University | Canada | 50 | Book Launch | In-Person |
| June 10th to 11th 2026 | AI and Equity at the Frontier: Palestine, Liberation, and Academic Freedom | CFR | Aaida Mamuji, Christo El Morr, Emilio Dabed, Faisal Bhabha, Muhannad Ayyash, Nahla Abdo, Nayrouz Abu Hatoum, Rabab Abdulhadi, Rachel Gorman, Riham Al-Saadi, Sarah Samuel, Wafaa Hasan | respective to the name in column to the left: York University, York University, York University, York University, Mount Royal University, Carleton University, Concordia University, San Francisco State University, York University, University of Windsor, Mount Royal University, University of Toronto | Canada | 15 | Symposium | In-Person |
| June 8th 2026 | Advancing Equity and Intersectionality in Nonprofits and Policy | CFR | Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, Ingrid Palmer, Maria Dexborg, Susan Hamsis | Various Community Organizations | Canada | 59 | Panel | Virtual |
A Detailed Look at Past Events in the 2026/2027 reporting year at the Centre for Feminist Research
A feminist perspective on technical fairness measures for AI systems within the EU legal framework
The CFR hosted Prof. Anna CAPELLÀ I RICART who is an associate professor of Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). She holds a PhD in Law. She is also member of the Institute of Law and Technology (IDT-UAB) in the same Faculty. Her main fields of research are the protection of fundamental rights in the digital context and the opportunities and challenges of affirmative action measures.
In this presentation Anna addressed i) what can we understand for gender discrimination, ii) why decisions made through AI can lead to gender discrimination, iii) the EU legal framework on technical fairness measures for AI systems, iv) the trade-offs that this measures imply and v) the critiques that arise from its implementation from a feminist perspective.
June 19 @ 6:30 PM
Upstart & Crow
The Vancouver launch of Amanda De Lisio's Play Naked: Puta Economics Against Olympic Dispossession (MQUP 2026) was a great success. The evening featured a reading and conversation with the author and Dr. Jennie Pearson, exploring questions of sex work, urban dispossession, and collective resistance in the context of Olympic and World Cup mega-events.
The program was followed by an audience Q&A and a community gathering. This was a free, in-person event (RSVP was required). We had 25 people attend!
The Toronto launch of Amanda De Lisio's Play Naked: Puta Economies Against Olympic Dispossession with Elene Lam & Simone Bohn was a great success! We had 50 people attend.
Community donations were welcomed in solidarity with CasaNem & Coletivo Puta Davida.
PayPal: casanem2016@gmail.com
Co-sponsored by the Faculty of Health, Centre for Feminist Research, CITY Institute & CERLAC at York University.
At Rio de Janeiro’s 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, where athletes were celebrated as symbols of national achievement, sex workers – reclaiming the term puta – mobilized their own bodily labour within neoliberal regimes of visibility and control, leaving behind embodied and unexpected legacies of resistance. Play Naked reclaims sex work as a site of puta economic agency and political resistance, where femme and trans bodies can assert value and visibility within state systems designed to exploit or erase them. Moving beyond spectacle and protest, Amanda De Lisio draws on extensive interviews with sex workers in Rio de Janeiro, whose stories are often ignored, infantilized, or co-opted to foment moral panic about human trafficking at major sporting events. Their narratives reveal the persistence of state violence and the complex strategies of defiance used by workers to navigate – and sometimes turn to their advantage – the rapid urban transformations driven by mega-events. Rejecting familiar narratives of displacement, De Lisio illuminates everyday acts of endurance and defiance where land reform, urban renewal, and capitalist expansion collide with gendered and racialized bodies.
AI and Equity at the Frontier: Palestine, Liberation, and Academic Freedom
June 10–11, 2026
The Centre for Feminist Research hosted AI and Equity at the Frontier: Palestine, Liberation, and Academic Freedom, a two-day symposium examining the intersections of artificial intelligence, settler colonialism, surveillance, gendered digital silencing, platform governance, and academic freedom. Bringing together scholars from Canada, the United States, and Ireland, the symposium explored how AI and digital infrastructures shape the policing, marginalization, and erasure of Palestinian scholarship, advocacy, and resistance. The event concluded with a plenary discussion on future directions for Palestine-focused research, policy, advocacy, and coalition-building, including the role of the Palestine Research Cluster at the Centre for Feminist Research.
