Louise Levesque Lopman

Areas of Expertise

Gender and Globalization; Maquila (Sweatshop) Workers in El Salvador; Qualitative Research; Feminist Phenomenology

Email: lopman@brandeis.edu

Current Project

“El Salvador Not For Sale: Voices of Women Maquila Workers and Organized Resistance,” explores impacts of “free” trade and other neoliberal policies on women’s work. Research includes in-depth interviews with workers, labor and union organizers, Salvadoran Legislative and U.S. Embassy Officials, and unprecedented access to interview and photograph in the maquila that manufactures for GAP.

Biography

Louise Levesque Lopman is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts where she taught and chaired the Department of Sociology, and established and was Director of the Women’s Studies Program.  She was awarded several faculty and research grants, one of which supported her sabbatical research in El Salvador where she was also an International Observor in the Salvadoran presidential elections.

Louise was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women  and a Visiting Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University. An active member for many years in the Society of Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS), Louise was Co-chair, Program Chair, and member of the Editorial Board. A Scholar in the Women’s Studies Scholars Program at Brandeis since 1993, she is also the Scholars Cohort and Mentoring Coordinator.      

Most of Louise’s current research and scholarship intersect with feminist phenomenological sociology and the qualitative study of women’s subjective experience in the context of gender and corporate globalization.  Her work-in-progress focuses on the impact of “free” trade agreements, trade liberalization, and privatization on women maquila (“sweatshop”) workers in Free Trade Zones in El Salvador.

Education

Ph.D., Brandeis University

M.A., Brandeis University

B.S., Boston University

Representative Publications

Lopman, Louise.   “Women Combatants and the Emergence of Gender Awareness in Postconflict El Salvador.”  Brandeis Gender and Development Forum, 2, 1 (March 2008)

Lopman, Louise.  “Listen, and You Will Hear: Reflections on Interviewing from a Feminist Phenomenological Perspective.”  Feminist Phenomenology, edited by Linda Fisher and Lester Embree.  Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. 103-32.

Links

Behind the Label

Campaign for Labor Rights

CISPES: Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

Clean Clothes Campaign

International Labor Committee

Maquila Solidarity

UNITE! Stop Sweatshops Campaign

United Students Against Sweatshops

National Mobilization Against Sweatshops