Gender Issues are relevant to all of society, and all areas of academia.  The University of Malta recognised this in the setting up of the Faculty for Social Wellbeing (July 2012), clearly indicating that a Department of Gender Studies would form part of this Faculty. The Department was eventually established by Council in November 2013.

The Department is therefore very new but has many dreams and schemes… Its current academic staff, Dr JosAnn Cutajar (Head), Prof Brenda Murphy, Dr Marceline Naudi and Dr Gisella Orsini as well as the Administration Specialist, Ms Samantha Grima and Administrator 1, Ms Marica Galeaare working very hard to try to ensure that as many of these as possible come true.

We are building our Department on three pillars, embracing Teaching, Research and Activism. We intend to be an ‘active’ and relevant department working closely with stakeholders in the community, including Malta, Europe and beyond, and to forge real cooperation and collaboration both within the University, across Faculties, Departments, Institutes and Centres, as well as outside, with Public Entities and Civil Society.

The Department of Gender Studies through its academic staff is already involved in European projects and agencies such as EU COST projects on Femicide across Europe, and Appearance Matters, as well as the European Women’s Lobby Observatory on Violence against Women and EU FRA (Fundamental Rights Agency).  Locally we are involved in various Domestic Violence Shelters, migrants and refugee work, gay rights and work on Social Justice generally. 

This website will guide you through an overview of the dreams and schemes, the teaching, research work and activism of the Department of Gender Studies within the University of Malta. You can find profiles of the Faculty academic staff, as well as information on the programmes planned. 

Just a quick word about the Department's name... Whilst the name in English was quite clear - Department of Gender Studies - when it came to translating it into Maltese we encountered various difficulties. First of all, in Maltese, it's interesting to note that we don't actually have a proper word for gender. The word that we tend to adopt is the word 'ġeneru', but 'ġeneru' as explained by Prof. Oliver Friggieri actually means genre, as in genre of poetry, prose, novels etc. However it is the word that has entered into common usage by some official organisations such as NCPE. In other situations, for example the National Office of Statistics, the word 'sess' is used because they are talking about statistics, and about males and females in terms of demographics and sex. 'Dipartiment tal-Istudji dwar is-Sessi' would not be appropriate, and we weren't very happy with 'Dipartiment tal-Istudji tal-Ġeneru'. We tried to come up with something more creative and one of the words we were considering was 'femaskili' as suggested by Prof. Anthony Aquilina (as he urged us to take the opportunity and create an apposite term). However, following much discussion and reflection we opted for 'Dipartiment Studji dwar il-Ġeneri' which was actually a suggestion by Prof. Oliver Friggieri. 

© photo by: Michal Hustaty