2025-2026 Year in Review

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As the 2025–2026 academic year reaches its end, we would like to thank our faculty, staff, students, and community members for supporting the work of CSW|Streisand Center. Here is our year in review.

Welcoming Jessica Cattelino

This year, we welcomed our new director Jessica Cattelino as the new Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center. As a Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies with a courtesy appointment in Gender Studies, she has been an integral part of CSW|Streisand for over a decade and longtime member of the UCLA community.

A panel discussion takes place beneath a projected screen reading “The Barbra Streisand Center Annual Lecture.” Four speakers are seated on stage facing an audience. From left to right are Shannon Speed, director of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center and professor of American Indian Studies, Anthropology, and Gender Studies; historian Timothy Snyder, speaking into a handheld microphone; Ju Hui Judy Han, associate professor of Gender Studies at UCLA, wearing a red top and patterned skirt; and a fourth moderator seated at the far right. Small tables with white floral arrangements and water bottles sit beside the speakers, while audience members fill the foreground. The event is part of the Barbra Streisand Center’s annual lecture series.

Barbra Streisand Lecture

Our third annual UCLA Barbra Streisand Lecture hosted historian Timothy Snyder, Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, for his talk, “The Truth about Freedom: How Lies Oppress and How Facts Liberate.”

The lecture was followed by a panel featuring Ju Hui Judy Han (Associate Professor, Gender Studies, UCLA), Shannon Speed (Director, American Indian Studies Center, Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs), and Jessica Cattelino (Professor, American Indian Studies, Anthropology and Gender Studies, Center for the Study of Women|Streisand Center, UCLA). The discussion explored Snyder’s “Truth about Freedom” framework, emphasizing how the social sciences are essential in combating disinformation.

Eight people sit around a large white conference table in a bright meeting room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a street lined with palm trees. Participants are engaged in discussion, with one person gesturing while speaking and others listening. Laptops, water bottles, notebooks, and printed materials are spread across the table. A reusable shopping bag and personal items are visible on nearby chairs. Sunlight fills the space, creating an open and collaborative atmosphere.

Environmental Futures

We welcomed our AY 2025–2026 Barbra Streisand Fellows in Environmental Justice cohort including Nikki Barry, Pamela Yeh, Bharat, Rachel Vaughn, Ellen Scott, Angela Robinson, Regan Patterson, Angie Ontiniano, Sean Metzger, Kaily Heitz, Ayasha Guerin, and Erin Cooney. As a part of the Barbra Streisand Center’s Impact of Climate Change Research stream, this initiative provides support and grants for faculty researchers. Additionally, this year we launched our Feminist Environmental Futures Research Stream.

Four conference panelists dressed professionally.

Thinking Gender Conference

Our annual graduate research conference, Thinking Gender 2026: Feminist and Queer Ecologies, was organized by graduate student researcher Tavi Carpenter (Coast Miwok, Dry Creek Pomo, Southern Pomo, Mishewal Wappo) and featured keynote speaker Cutcha Risling Baldy (Hupa, Karuk, Yurok). Fourteen graduate students from around the world presented on and discussed topics of feminism and the environment for the 130 attendees. The conference continued the 36-year tradition of Thinking Gender showcasing the importance of feminist graduate scholarship at UCLA.

 

Feminist Research Support

CSW | Streisand has supported feminist research across the campus through several initiatives:

  • We gave 12 Faculty Manuscript Development Grants to  support assistant professors and early career faculty through manuscript workshops.
  • We hosted 7 day-long faculty writing retreats to sustain research, collaboration, and intellectual community amongst UCLA faculty.

  • We also gave out 13 Faculty Writing Retreat Grants so faculty could host self-organized writing retreats within their communities.

  • We hosted a two-day workshop series, From Pitch to Publish in the Public Humanities, to help faculty translate their research and write for a public audience.

  • We hosted a Feminist Co-authorship & Collaboration workshop, which surfaced the collaborative labor behind promotional structures and the myth of single authorship. Participants emphasized the need to actively counter these harms by modeling transparent authorship practices, crediting student contributions, and intentionally citing marginalized scholars.

  • Our AY 2025–2026 CSW | Streisand Center Student Awards funded outstanding contributions to Black feminist theory, community-driven healing, reproductive justice, and systemic analyses of sexuality and power.

UCLA student and Survivors + Allies member, America Rodriguez-Lagos Testimony, testifying in Sacramento.

Student Project and Research-based Advocacy

Our student workers Zaia and Molly set up our quarterly Books to Jails Book Drive, collaborating with LA County Library, and IGNITE Women’s clothing drive. Anna Li organized the Beyond Representation: Practicing Feminist Engineering event with engineering students and Dr. Regan Patterson.

A new report from Survivors + Allies, a student advocacy group within CSW|Streisand Center, was just released, featuring a sweeping analysis of how colleges across California respond to sexual violence and where those systems fall short. Drawing on data from more than 1,600 students, Dreaming Together: California Student Survivors Reimagining Campus Responses to Sexual Violence outlines urgent reforms centered on survivor care, equity, and accountability. The report arrives at a pivotal moment, coinciding with S+A’s co-sponsorship of AB 2212, the Higher Education AI Response (HEAR) Survivors Act.

Presenter shares REGEN network information to a group of people.

Reproductive Justice

We solidified the UCLA Reproductive Health and Gender Equity Network with UCLA Bixby Center to Advance Sexual and Reproductive Health Equity UCLA Center for Reproductive Science, Health & Education UCLA Center for the Study of Women | Barbra Streisand Center UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy to advance reproductive science and care, reproductive rights, and reproductive justice.

Garden full of greenery and gardening materials.

Community Garden

In partnership with the UCLA Semel HCI Center’s community garden program, we grew lemongrass, lemon balm, catnip, oregano, lemon thyme, tarragon, poppies, cucumber, squash, basil, raspberries, strawberries, lavender, nasturtium, and pole beans to share with our community this year.