Halkes Women + Faculty Network


The Halkes Women+ Faculty Network strives to make Radboud University a more diverse, inclusive, and fair place. Although the network has a focus on gender equality and inclusion, it strives to think and work intersectionally, incorporating other facets of identity.

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Highlights

Queer(ing) Radboud 2023

Queer(ing) Radboud 2.0

Together with the new Gender & Sexuality Alliance at Radboud and the DEI office, the Halkes Women + Faculty Network invites you to the second edition of Queer(ing) Radboud.

Mission

The work of the network focuses on four things:

  1. Facilitating contact between people, from PhD candidate to professor, at different faculties and from different disciplines, to help build professional networks, share experiences, and learn from each other.
  2. Empowering people by increasing their visibility and supporting their professional and personal development.
  3. Supporting people’s professional and personal development by providing them with information, connecting them to resources, and helping them develop their network.
  4. Building an inclusive and fair work environment at Radboud University by advocating for and promoting fair policies, supportive facilities, and education and trainings on topics such as diversity and harassment.

Board members

The current board of the Halkes Women+ Faculty Network consists of academics from several faculties of Radboud University:

Contact Halkes

Do you have a question for the Halkes Women+ Faculty Network, would you like to subscribe to the newsletter, or are you interested in joining the network? Please feel free to contact halkes [at] ru.nl (halkes[at]ru[dot]nl) 

 

Catharina Halkes

Catharina Halkes

The Halkes Women+ Faculty Network is named after Catharina Halkes (1920-2011), the first professor of Women’s Studies at Radboud University, which was called Catholic University Nijmegen at the time. She became professor of Feminism and Christianity in 1983, when she was 62 years old, and retired three years later.  As a feminist and theologian, she was active in the women's movement within the Catholic church, addressing the role of women in the church as well as in larger society. She gained a measure of notoriety when, during her time as professor, she was forbidden to address Pope John Paul II when he visited the Netherlands in 1985. She is considered the founding mother of feminist theology in the Netherlands.

About 40 years since Professor Halkes’ professorship, only around 30% of professors at Radboud University are women. This is an improvement, but it is still far from equality. We think this can and should be improved.

To honour the effort of Professor Halkes in advocating women’s rights at our university, our network was named after her: the Halkes Women Faculty Network.