The Feminist Library is back! Ffotogallery launched the Feminist Library last October 2024 during Ffoto Cymru, our International Photography Festival and it was a great success. The Feminist Library is a space to listen, learn and discuss ideas.
We would like to thank the Paul Mellon Centre , whose generous funding has enabled us to continue these sessions.
These events are open to the public, free to attend and will be hosted monthly from July - December 2025.
Thursday 10 July 2025, 12:30pm - 2:30pm
FREE - Booking recommended : https://tinyurl.com/4xdbu2ne
Clare Bottomley: Reframing the library as a feminist space
Clare will facilitate a roundtable discussion exploring how growing a feminist library is not only about the materials it contains, but also about how we engage with those materials—and with each other—within the space. Rooted in Black and feminist thought, the session invites participants to rethink dominant notions of knowledge, research methodologies, and citational practices—challenging what is traditionally included or excluded, and asking why.
The discussion will question the authority of standardized academic rigor and the institutionalization of knowledge, proposing instead the generative freedom found in undisciplining research practices. It will consider how spaces like libraries can act as sites of collective meaning-making and reimagination.
Reframing the library as a feminist space, Clare will advocate for the inclusion of alternative forms of research and citation—such as gossip, tarot, and performance—and interrogate why such methods have been historically disregarded.
About Clare Bottomley:
Clare Bottomley is an artist, educator, and early-career researcher based in Helsinki, Finland. She is a Doctoral Researcher at Aalto University, exploring re-enactment as a creative method for re-examining past representations in photography, research, and pedagogy. She also lectures at Falmouth University, UK, within the Institute of Photography. Her work has been exhibited across the UK, Finland and internationally, including the Hayward Gallery touring exhibition Act of Creation: Art and Motherhood, currently on display at Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK.
Feminist Library's confirmed list of speakers and dates, more to be confirmed soon:
10th July : Clare Bottomley
20th August : Nelly Ating
(Date tbc) September : Dr Durre Shahwar
(Date tbc) September : Eleanor Whiteman
15th October : Marianne Mulvey
November tbc
December tbc