Emeritus Professor Barbara Baird

After completing my PhD about South Australian women's experiences of illegal abortion (before 1970), and almost a decade working and teaching at Flinders and the University of Adelaide, in 1999 I went to the University of Tasmania in Hobart where I coordinated the Gender Studies program for seven years. I have been in the discipline of Women's & Gender Studies at Flinders University since 2006. In 2024 I became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for pro-choice advocacy and services to tertiary education.

My research focuses on the history and politics of sexuality and reproduction in C20th and C21st Australia, with a focus on abortion, queer issues and the notion of 'the child'.

I am currently the Co-Convenor of the South Australian Abortion Action Coalition (saaac, see https://saabortionactioncoalition.com/). saaac's goal is to improve SA women's access to abortion services and to normalise abortion as health care. We achieved the decriminalisation of abortion in SA in 2021 and continue to advocate for improved access to abortion care.

I have been a regular contributor to the forum program in FEAST, Adelaide's LGBT cutural festival, since its inception in 1997. I have also participated in queer (and abortion-focused) activities sponsored by the Migration Museum and Centre for Democracy.

In 2020 I was part of the collective which is orgnanising the Australian Women's & Gender Studies Associatoin biannual conference, to be held this year in Adelaide. Twice, in 2007 and 2012, with Professor Damien Riggs, I co-convened the annual conference of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association.

Since 2010 I have, with fellow feminist academics from UniSA and the University of Adelaide, co-convened the SA Women's & Gender Studies Annual Public Lecture

General interests: The cultural politics and histories of sexuality and reproduction in Australia; abortion; feminism in Australia; 'intersectional' approaches to gender and sexuality issues; representations of children and 'the child'; critical race and whiteness theories in Australian contexts; Indigenous studies; memory and representations of the past.

Abortion Care is Health Care was published by Melbourne University Press in 2023.

My collaboration with colleagues from Macquarie University, investigating the history of 'sexual citizenship' in Australia since the late 1960s (ARC Discovery Project DP170100502 2017-2019), culminated in Personal Politics: Sexuality, Gender and the Remaking of Citizenship in Ausralia, published by Monash University Publishing in 2024. The case studies in the project which were my focus included the establishment of legal abortion services in Australia since the 1970s, the LGBTIQ movement in C21st Australia, the campaign for marriage equality in particular, and the campaign to support the Safe Schools scheme.

I am currently researching the impact of an ascendant far right movement in Australia in relation to abortion politics and the intersection of abortion and disability politics.

• Nov 2012 Anitra Goriss-Hunter - Australian Women's & Gender Studies Association biennial prize for Best PhD thesis

• A Place in the Empire: Negotiating the Life of Gertrude Kenny (1)
• The experience of 'floating sex workers' in Bangladesh (1)
• The Gendered Newsroom: Embodied Subjectivity in the Changing World of the Media (1)
• Uses of performance to prevent rape and sexual assault (joint with Drama) (1)
• Wired and Dangerous: Maternal Bodies in Cyber(cultural)space (1)
• Women filmmakers in post New Order Indonesia (jointly with Flinders Asia Centre) (1)

• Representations of maids in Argentinian literature (joint with History) — Associate (1)
• Spousal violence in Bangladesh: 'problem wives' and shelter homes (jointly with Social Work) (1)