BY DANIELLE LEGARE

Melinda Lemke, associate professor of educational policy and affiliated faculty in global gender and sexuality studies, recently served as lead editor and first author of “Beyond Now: Feminist Politics, Policy, and Research Futures in Education,” a special issue of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE). Published in 2025, the collection brings together ten articles authored by 24 scholars representing diverse disciplinary, geographic and professional backgrounds to examine how education engages feminist thought and what that means for advancing critical inquiry, theorizing and research praxis.

Developed in collaboration with co-editors Michelle D. Young, Hollie Mackey and Angel Miles Nash, the special issue explores how feminist scholarship can move beyond critique toward future-focused problem solving in educational policy, research and practice.

According to Lemke, the project began after having ongoing conversations among the editorial team about where feminist research could most meaningfully intervene in contemporary debates.

“This project emerges from the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic, a judicial assault on bodily autonomy, the perversion of anti-discrimination law, existential risk from AI and increased spending on the U.S. military- and detention-industrial-complex,” she said.

“The work also began at a historical flashpoint—when the U.S. public might elect its first bi-racial, woman president, or we would jettison toward a unique form of neoliberal authoritarianism,” Lemke continued. “Our editorial team was ready to write about either scenario, but the urgency for this project was the result of the latter and its implications for public schools, students, families and the wider U.S. and global commons.”

In her role as lead editor and first author, Lemke developed the theme for the special issue and contributed to its core theoretical and methodological framing, while also helping to coordinate the internal peer-review process, maintain correspondence with contributors and manage editorial logistics with the journal.

The collection was intentionally curated to avoid replicating the same inequities it seeks to critique by creating space for collaboration across career stages, including partnerships that brought doctoral students and junior academics into conversation with senior scholars.

The resulting issue highlights a wide range of critical qualitative methodologies—from intersectional participatory action research and Indigenous storywork to counter-narratives and collective feminist storytelling—offering research-driven recommendations for what Lemke described as “individual and collective survivance” in educational policy and practice. Contributors represent institutions across 11 U.S. states and in Chile.

Among them are GSE faculty member Katy Leigh-Osroosh, assistant professor of counseling, school and educational psychology, whose article explores the use of storywork as a form of resistance and survivance within academic spaces.

“Contributing to this special issue will be a highlight of my career,” said Leigh-Osroosh. “The entire process—from writing, to review, to publication—embodied care and wellness, essential elements for thriving that are extremely rare to experience as a pre-tenure faculty in higher education.”

GSE alum Ana Luisa Muñoz-García, PhD ’15, associate professor at the Faculty of Education of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, also contributed an article that examines fictional collective narratives as a feminist methodological tool for reimagining gender knowledge production in higher education.

“Contributing to this special issue was a rewarding scholarly experience, offering an important space to critically examine feminism(s) within knowledge production to think otherwise at a time of growing societal backlash,” said Muñoz-García. “As a researcher based in Chile, it was especially meaningful to engage in dialogue with colleagues from different parts of the world.”

Taken together, the special issue encourages education researchers and practitioners to engage not only in critique but in collective responsibility for advancing more equitable futures.

“We’re standing witness to an age-old colonial strategy—divide-and-conquer,” Lemke said. “This flashpoint in U.S. history is a cultural revolution of sorts, but it also is not an aberration. In this moment of overwhelm and despair, intersectional and decolonial feminism teaches us that because we tell our stories not just with our words, but also with our lives—as is demonstrated in the special issue articles—then so too our power isn’t dependent on the conditions of the day.”

The themes explored in the special issue were further discussed during a Feb. 5 panel hosted by UB’s Gender Institute, which brought together editors and contributors for a dialogue on feminist politics, policy and research futures in education.

The virtual event, “Feminist Politics, Policy, and Research: Editors and Authors Dialogue about a Beyond Now,” connected scholarship with broader conversations about policy, activism and public education at a time when debates over curriculum, academic freedom and diversity initiatives continue to intensify nationwide.

“The feminist project, and what we refer to as ‘plural feminisms' in the special issue introduction, is about much more than gender equality or even gender,” said Lemke. “This work collectively keeps alive the futurity of a gendered-raced research canon in education and adjacent fields.”