Fresno State Professor Ellen Gruenbaum leads a discussion at a week-long seminar in Bellagio, Italy. The seminar focused on “Reproduction, Globalization, and the State.”

Professor participates in international conference
Ellen Gruenbaum (Anthropology) was an invited participant this summer at a week-long seminar at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy.  The 20-person seminar on “Reproduction, Globalization, and the State” included presentations and discussion of the research of each of the participants, who came from seven countries, and intensive planning for the publication of an edited book.  Her paper, entitled “Global processes and religious ideological controversies:  The impact of international and local programs for Muslim women’s reproductive health and human rights in Sudan,” was based on the research she carried out in Sudan during her sabbatical leave in 2004.

At the end of the seminar, Gruenbaum traveled to Florence, Italy, where she presented her research in a symposium on Harmful Traditional Practices at the University of Florence Medical School.  She also was on a panel presentation at the Edison Bookshop in the Piazza de la Republika, where she discussed her book, “The Female Circumcision Controversy:  An Anthropological Perspective,” along with the Italian and Somali-Italian authors of the study “Ferite per Siempre” (Damaged Forever), a book that focuses on female genital cutting practices affecting Somali immigrants to Italy.

While in Florence, she met with people at the Innocenti Research Center, UNICEF’s center for research on children, to help plan the Academic Consultation on Harmful Traditional Practices that was held at UN headquarters on September 8-9.  Dr. Gruenbaum attended that two-day meeting along with 25 representatives of academic disciplines, researchers, and activists from several countries.  The meeting, which included the Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, Rima Salah, and the Director of UNICEF’s Child Protection Unit, representatives of the Innocenti Research Center and the Italian Government, featured a panel introduced by Dr. Gruenbaum that focused on research experiences on this topic in several countries.  The purpose of the meeting was to redirect UNICEF’s efforts for Child Protection in the area of harmful traditional practices such as FGC.

Gruenbaum’s photographs of Sudanese children were featured in a 2005 publication about female genital cutting. Issued by the Innocenti Research Center in Florence and available on their Web site.