Contact
Research Areas
Gender and Corporate Globalization; Human Rights and Social Justice in El Salvador; Qualitative Feminist Research
Education
Ph.D., Brandeis University
M.A., Brandeis University
B.S., Boston University
Links
CISPES: Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
UNITE! Stop Sweatshops Campaign
Louise Levesque Lopman
Louise Levesque Lopman
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. She has been one of our longest standing members of the Scholars Program, having joined in 1993.
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.
Current Projects
Why El Salvador?: Women Maquila (Sweatshop) Workers and the Struggle for Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice explores impacts of “free” trade agreements and neoliberal policies on women workers and their struggle for rights. Research includes interviews with workers, labor organizers, U.S. Embassy and Salvadoran Legislative officials, and observations in the maquila that manufactures for GAP.
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.