Meeting Gillian Youngs

 The highlight of visiting Canterbury Christ Church University was meeting an old and dear friend Gillian Youngs, who is now the Dean of Faculty or Arts and Humanities and the  Institutional lead for arts, culture and creative Industries. Both Gillian and I had shared a room in a Conference in Hongkong for the first time some where in the late 1990's and have been in touch. Though during our first meeting we had come from different countries and cultures, Feminism was the bridge that connected us and we spoke late into the night on the different issues related to women in our respective  countries. I still remember that we also sat down the next day and wrote together a piece on the North South dialogue related to women for some News letter. Gillian spoke of her dream of having a Feminist Journal and how she and her friend Jindy from Australia visualised it as being truly Feminist in its ideology  and never wanted this to be fixed permanently  with a place or people. I soon found myself in the Board of the International Feminist Journal of Politics by Routlege, Taylor and Francis and later on  became one of the editors along with Gillian and Kathy  from the third volume and  with Catherine and Sandra for the fourth  volume for a period of five years. I had learnt a lot from both Gillian and Kathy the two other  editors in the team. Today in its twenty fifth year, this Journal had moved from strength to strength and I still continue to be associated with it as a senior Editor and advisor along with Gillian, Kathy, Catherine, Sandra and many others. This Journal has moved from Australia to Asia to Canada, US, New Zealand, in terms of its editors and location and there is no one fixed office or a name attached to it . However, it has brought in a pool of some of the best Feminists through out the world from different continents and some of the best Universities around the world, together with the common concern for an equal and  gender just society. At Canterbury, Gillian with her very creative and novel approach to issues, had developed a new space for creative arts called the Daphne Oram Centre for creative arts and we were taken around a newly constructed  building of three floors which she calls her baby, where there was a theater and Centres of photography, printing, music, theatre, graphics, computer gaming and many others  as regular courses with a combination of the state of the art technology of recent times and also the earlier technologies before the dawn of computers. It combines theory and practical training to give a more realistic approach to creativity amongst the students. This building has yet to be inaugurated. What I found interesting was that a portion of the St. Francis seminary  Wall of the earlier period is preserved by building a glass panel on top of it and the building has come up on top of this. This also over looks the Canterbury Cathedral and to one looking at the view it looks as if the cathedral is framed for posterity. Gillian took us to a beautiful tea house, pub called Abode and we had one of the best English tea with the best scons, cakes and pastries freshly  made and looked as if they had just come from the Owen. It was a wonderful, beautiful, quiet and cosy place and we could chat and catch up on the few decades of the gap in our meeting. Gillian has some great plans for the University and she comes with a background of  an immense experience of working in many different Universities in England in leadership roles. She has been invited to give this traditional site  a new and modern touch which she is successfully doing. Also met her partner Keith another very  creative person. Gillian was feeling bad that now she is not able to write and publish as much as she did earlier due to her new role but she enjoyed moulding and training students for a new future. A great meeting and  I look forward to seeing in the coming years  more of the  other innovative  initiatives that Gillian will be taking to make this University a truly globalised modern  University and yet one that is rooted to the past.