International conference in Leeds charts new directions in global singles studies

An international conference has brought together scholars from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences to explore the rapidly growing field of singles studies

Co-hosted at Cloth Hall Court in Leeds from 3 to 5 June by the Leeds University Centre for African Studies and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, in collaboration with the International Singles Studies Association (ISSA), the event ran under the theme 'New directions in singles studies: towards pluriversity'.

The three-day event was co-organised by Professor Adriaan van Klinken and Professor Tendai Mangena, and funded by the British Academy as part of Professor Mangena’s Global Professorship at the University of Leeds.

Delegates travelled from 12 countries – including Israel, the US, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and the UK – to share perspectives on how singlehood is shaped by distinct cultural and geographic contexts.

To help address the historic marginalisation of Global South scholarship in this field, British Academy funding directly supported the attendance of 11 delegates based at higher education institutions across Africa, as well as India and Indonesia.

The conference builds directly on Professor Mangena’s ongoing research within the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science. Her four-year British Academy project, running until 2027, recently produced the short documentary film St Monica’s Guild of Single Mothers: A Struggle for Inclusion, which centres the voices of Catholic single mothers resisting exclusion within Zimbabwean Christian communities.

Main photo: delegates cather for the singles studies conference organised by Professors Tendai Mangena and Adriaan Van Klinken.