April 25th – 27th 2025 at High Leigh Conference Centre, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire and online.
Women’s spiritual voices
We are delighted that this conference went so well, with 35 people at High Leigh and 21 online.
We are writing up the talks and they will be published in Pamphlets No. 48 and No. 49. These will be sent free to all members of QUG and to all who attended the conference. It will also be available for purchase and we will inform you when it becomes available – we hope by early August.
Here is a list of the speakers:
Rhiannon Grant spoke under the titles Women, the divine and spirituality and Women and Quakers
Janet Monahan led a workshop on differences in thinking between women and men.
Dora Bek chaired and spoke with four others at a session entitled Some women’s spiritual journeys
Frances Martin talked to us online about Women, art and spirituality.
Susan Norris led the Saturday epilogue.
Georgina Wright gave the concluding talk to the conference on the Sunday – Women’s activism and spirituality from different cultures.
Further details about the speakers at the conference:
Rhiannon Grant
Rhiannon is Woodbrooke’s Deputy Programme Leader for Research and Programme Coordinator for Modern Quaker Thought. Rhiannon’s work at Woodbrooke spans academic and practice-based approaches to Quakerism. She teaches in Woodbrooke’s short course program and supervises research and teaches postgraduate students within the Centre for Research in Quaker Studies. Outside Woodbrooke, she researches and writes about Quakers for both academic and general audiences.
Janet Monahan
Janet is a Quaker, a teacher, an academic and a thinker. She is currently writing up her doctoral research entitled Spiritually Aware Practice (SAP) in Education. At the conference she will be asking the question: do women and men think in the same way?
Dora Bek
Dora is a solution-focused therapist and Reiki practitioner. Her life has been defined by a life-long passion for learning. Her universalist spiritual quest evolves around continued philosophizing and asking what Fox’s faith and philosophy have in common with other ideas of transcendence, conscience, reason, truth and reality.
Georgina Wright
Georgina is a teacher, blogger, poet and novelist. She moved from London to live in the south of Spain. Fascinated by the wildlife of Spain, but saddened to see how such wonderful diversity of life is at risk, she began to write. Her novel The Call of the Wild Valley was published in 2023.
Frances Martin
Frances is a figurative artist and convenor of the Norwich 20 Group of professional artists. She will contribute to our themes of women, art and spirituality and share some of her work online. In 2023 Frances contributed to a major exhibition in Norwich churches on the world of Julian, the mystic and visionary, who wrote the first book in English 650 years ago. Julian wrote about her visions or pictures, sent to her from God because she wanted to understand life and what it means. Frances’ own spirituality is shown in her paintings illustrating Julian and her visions.
Susan Norris
Susan is a retired Art Psychotherapist who worked in NHS adult mental health services for twenty-five years. She continues her personal art practice, is interested in various forms of meditation and is currently serving as an Elder in Mid Essex Area Meeting. A question for this conference is: How do we SEE women’s voices?