Joyce Jacobsen
Maintaining the immediacy of a Live Meeting 
 
Joyce Jacobsen, IAFFE President
 
On June 29th you will kick off the 27th IAFFE Annual Conference in Seoul. The theme is “Gender Inequalities in a Multipolar World” - why?
 
The 2017 IAFFE conference theme is an attempt to focus our attention on how feminist economics can be useful to educators, feminist organizations and policymakers in a world where there are multiple power centers in both economic and political terms.
 
What is the social and cultural resonance on your conference?
 
This situation leads to many topics that feminist economists could effectively and singularly address, including expansion of the care economy and social welfare in emerging economies, transitions from austerity to growth-promoting policies (or the reverse) and the effects of such transitions on different demographic groups, increased marketization of formerly nonmarket activities, sex trafficking both within and between nations, and the economic effects of war and political instability on civil societies.
 
There will be a stream of inquiry throughout the conference specific to the East Asian context, given the conference’s location.
 
You have chosen Seoul and the Sungshin University this time for your convention. Why?
 
We try to rotate our conference on a three-year basis between North America, Europe, and the Global South. The Sungshin University team put in a strong proposal to host the conference, and we had not been to South Korea before.
 
For those delegates who cannot join you in Seoul, can they participate remotely / via social media?
 
No, we want to maintain the immediacy of a live meeting. The conference program is posted online, so interested parties can contact paper presenters for copies of their presentations.
 
What are currently the main challenges for IAFFE?
 
It is challenging to run an international organization and put on a conference in a different location around the world every summer. We have a stable financial structure, but we would like to further increase our funding so as to be able to award more travel grants to increase access to the conference.
 
Thank you Prof. Jacobsen.