Professor O'Neill of York University's Sociology dept is to have her work screened at a London film festival  

A film developed  from a walk Maggie O'Neill took with professor and filmmaker Jan Haaken, as part of O'Neill's Leverhulme Fellowship, filmed by Nelli Stavropoulou (PhD student supervised by O'Neill) Is shortlisted and will be screened at the London independent film festival Saturday April 15th. http://www.liff.org

From Portland's Walk of the Heroines to London's streets, Professor Maggie O'Neill invites academic and filmmaker Jan Haaken to re-imagine a route from a place she calls home to a new place of belonging and to walk this route across a different geographical, cultural and visual landscape, in London. 

Left to Right:. Jan Haaken, Maggie O'Neill, Nelli Stavropoulou

Drawing on ideas about culture, memory and borders--how human migrations involve seeking out places of familiarity and recognition, the walk opens up a space for dialogue where embodied knowledge, experience and memories can be shared. 

The Walk of the Heroines project re-traced in London's urban landscape tells us something about what a society really values and why there are so few monuments to our heroines. 

Combining archival footage and walking methods, Feminists Walking the City, invites new forms of cinematic storytelling that adopt dialogical practices and encourage interplays between private and public memory, while also exploring the relations between history, belonging and lived experience. 

This short documentary has been funded by The Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow Project: Methods on the Move: Experiencing and Imagining Borders, Risk & Belonging and is supported by the University of York and Portland State University. 

American novelist Alice Walker is quoted on Portland's Walk of the Heroines hardscape - a quote that is as fitting for these London walkers as for those who travel the streets of Portland: 

Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and respect for strength- in search of my mother's garden, I found my own. - Alice Walker, 1974