Jin Jian Azadi / Woman Life Freedom: A Social Vision for Human Dignity and Human Rights
Thursday, 30 March 2023, 7 – 8:30pm 
The Annual Front Line Defenders Lecture will be given by Parvin Ardalan, and is organised by Front Line Defenders and the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies.
The government’s murder of Jina Amini in September 2022 rocketed Iranian society into a revolutionary moment where woman has emerged as a symbol of resistance at the intersection of all forms of discrimination. In this paradigm shift, the past and current protest movements are linked together through the celebrated slogan of “Jin Jian Azadi”. A new horizon of change has now opened in front of us.
In her lecture, Parvin Ardalan will describe the current revolutionary moment in Iran. How and why did the government’s murder of Jina take us to this particular point? She will try to unpack the radical potential and meaning of Jin, Jian, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom). She will insist on the entangled relation of the three elements of this slogan and as such will argue that this slogan by linking the everyday and material necessities of life to the abstract notion of ‘rights’ opens a new horizon of feminist politics for Iran, in specific and the human rights discourse in general. In other words, in its insistence on life, this slogan ties material necessities to everyday needs. As such this slogan provides a concrete meaning to the generic and abstract notion of ‘human dignity’. Jin, Jian, Azadi aims at life in its totality and for this it is a radical and transformative slogan.
Parvin Ardalan is a feminist activist, journalist, and writer with a background in the grassroot feminist movement in Iran. She is currently a board member of Swedish PEN and a member of the network Feminists for Jina. She currently works at the Unit Documentation and Freedom of Expression at Malmoe City Archives.
Her interest in gender, social movements, and migration led her to launch a process in a joint effort with civil society and numerous cultural institutions thus creating Women Making HERstory - a project committed to the unveiling, visualizing, and rewriting the life and work of women with migration backgrounds in Sweden. Her next process was launching Migration Memory Encounters where the knowledge, experiences, and memories of migrants in various cultural fields have been rediscovered through live performances and installations in Sweden.
She was a co-founder of the Women Cultural Center and The One Million Signature Campaign in Iran - a grassroot movement aimed at repealing discriminatory laws against women in Iran. She was awarded the Olof Palme Prize In 2007 and has lived since 2009 in exile. She was the first guest writer of Malmoe City (2010-2012) in Sweden under the ICORN (The International Cities of Refuge Network) program.
Please register here.
Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: fazaelr@tcd.ie
Campus Location: Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute
Accessibility: Yes
Room: Neill Lecture Theatre
Event Category: Lectures and Seminars
Type of Event: One-time event
Audience: Postgrad, Faculty & Staff, Public
Cost: Free but registration is required
Contact Name: Dr Roja Fazaeli
Contact Email: fazaelr@tcd.ie
More info: www.eventbrite.ie…
