POSTPONED: Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee Coming to UAlbany Campus April 15, 2020

11x17_Leymah Gbowee 300DPI_ Michael Angelo for Wonderland high resolution face forward

Beyond Women’s Leadership: Liberian Lessons on Peace, Conflict, and Feminist Organizing
A Public Lecture by Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee
April 15, 2020 - 12 Noon
Campus Center Ballroom, Uptown Campus of the University at Albany
The event will include a luncheon and is free and open to the public

Leymah Gbowee speaking on panel

Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace and women’s rights activist best known for organizing a peace movement that brought together the Christian and Muslim women of Liberia, which played a pivotal role in bringing the country’s fourteen-year civil war to an end in 2003. This historic triumph ushered in the first female head of state on the African continent with the election of Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who was shored up by the same women who brokered peace for the nation. Both Gbowee and Sirleaf shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Yemeni activist and journalist Tawakkol Karman. View the poster for the event.

Leymah Gbowee is the subject of the award-winning documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008) and her memoir Mighty Be Her Powers (2011).

Gbowee launched the non-profit organization Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa in 2012, which is based in Monrovia, Liberia, and provides education and leadership development for women, girls, and young people. Her speaking engagements are supported by the nonprofit Peace is Loud.

The Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies is pleased to bring this event to the University at Albany in partnership with the following: NYS Writers Institute; Center for Leadership and Service; Center for Women in Government & Civil Society; Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy; College of Arts and Sciences; College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity; School of Social Welfare; School of Business; School of Public Health; School of Criminal Justice; Departments of Africana Studies; Anthropology; Communications; Latin American, Caribbean, & U.S. Latino Studies; Sociology; and University Auxiliary Services. 

Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008) trailer