Lenita Freidenvall, Drude Dahlerup and Monica Threlfall travelled to Santiago de Chile for the massive International Political Science Association (IPSA) conference, July 12-16 2009.

 They all gave papers on FEMCIT research. The highlight was undoubtedly the fact that President Michelle Bachelet - a declared feminist - addressed the conference with a thoughtful reflection of the needs of democracy in Latin America. It was also the 30th Anniversary of the founding of 'Research Committee 30' on Gender and Politics, so a special 2-day pre-conference was organised by the Chilean Fundación Mujeres, giving everyone the opportunity to mingle with Chilean women.

Monica Threlfall was a guest plenary speaker at the conference of the Association for Contemporary Iberian Studies (ACIS) in Dublin and presented her findings on People's preferences for their political representation in Spain, with comparisons to other European countries. (8.09.09)

Monica Threlfall (and Lenita Freidenvall) organised and chaired a well-attended panel at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) conference in Potsdam, at which the whole WP1 spoke We received good feedback and were glad to have attracted other papers to the panel entitled Beyond 'presence': new perspectives on women's representation. (10-12.09.09)