2026 SXGD Lecture: Dr. Natalie Kouri-Towe

In recent years, educational institutions across North America have developed a new kind of interest in concepts of safety, shaped by carceral logics of securitization and articulated through appeals to feeling safe. Recent carceral measures in the post-secondary context introduced after the rise of Palestine solidarity activism on campuses in response to the genocide include increasing private security and security contractors on campus, adopting surveillance technologies, calling police onto campus, searches and seizures, placing students on probation or suspending and expelling them for policy violations, and criminalizing non-violent offenses. Meanwhile, discourses around safety and “feeling safe” in the face of political and ideological contestation have largely aimed to punish rather than reduce harm. Connecting the carceral university to discourses around safety, this talk argues for a transformative and feminist approach in response to the weaponization of safety in education.

Join us for the 2026 SXGD lecture with Dr. Natalie Kouri-Towe. For more information on the certificate: https://www.queensu.ca/gnds/undergraduate/sxgd-certificate.

Natalie Kouri-Towe is an Associate Professor of feminism and sexuality at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University. Her research investigates the politics of solidarity under neoliberalism, with areas of focus ranging across responses to war in the Middle East, refugee crises, queer activism, and gender and sexuality pedagogies. Her edited book, (Concordia University Press 2024), connects to her new research on transformative pedagogies. In October 2025, she launched the Transformative Pedagogies Lab at Concordia University, a research space for the collaborative development and dissemination of scholarship and popular education tools on gender and sexuality pedagogies.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Department of Gender Studies