Kimberley Manning, PhD

Overview

Dr. Manning is Principal of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute. A Professor of Political Science and Women's Studies, Dr. Manning specializes in gender politics and Chinese politics. Her work also focuses on equity-seeking research projects in Canada, including efforts to support transgender young people and their families. In her work as a university leader and community organizer, Dr. Manning has co-founded a non-profit organization, supported student-directed projects in institutional equity, and presented before three different committees in the Canadian Senate since 2017. She is a 2021 recipient of the Concordia Academic Leadership Award.

Chinese Politics

Dr. Manning received a PhD in Political Science from the University of Washington in 2003, focusing her work on the informal and institutional dimensions of gender politics in revolutionary China. After a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for East Asian Studies,Dr. Manning co-edited Eating Bitterness, an exploration of the contested nature of state-society relations during the Great Leap Forward and famine, and is author of “The Party Family: Revolutionary Attachments and the Gendered Origins of Chinese State Power” (Cornell University Press, 2023). Jointly awarded best book in Comparative Politics by the Canadian Political Science Association (2024), “The Party Family” is based on interviews with over 160 Chinese farmers and officials as well as extensive consultation of local archives, explaining the astounding successes and devastating losses of social policy reform at the elite and grassroots of the Chinese Communist Party during the 1940s and 1950s. Nearly twenty years in development, parts of the manuscript have appeared in The China Quarterly, Modern China, and the China Review. Dr. Manning currently sits on the Editorial Board of Pacific Affairs, and has reviewed submissions for a wide range of journals including Comparative Politics, Positions, The China Quarterly, The China Journal, The Canadian Journal of Political Science, International Political Science Review, Modern China, Frontiers of History in China, Twentieth Century China.

Parent Advocacy and Transgender Youth and Children

In 2011, Dr. Manning began to develop new lines of research about, and services and supports for, transgender children and their families. Under Dr. Manning’s primary direction, two intersecting SSHRC-funded teams hosted the first national conference on transgender children and their families in 2012, bringing together over 70 Canadian academics, parent advocates, health practitioners, and community organizers. The team subsequently published an edited volume based on the conference proceedings, created the high-traffic website GenderCreativeKids.ca, co-founded a non-profit to serve parents of gender non-conforming children, published over half a dozen refereed journal articles, and participated in dozens of media stories and conference presentations. This work led to Dr. Manning presenting before the Canadian Senate as part of the effort to pass Bill C-16, legislation protecting gender identity and gender expression in the Canadian Human Rights Act (now law). Dr. Manning is currently a co-investigator on a SSHRC-funded research project focused on the advocacy of parents of transgender children and youth. She is also the member of a partnership grant funded by the FRQSC to provide new forms of institutional support for transgender youth in Quebec

Institutional Equity 

Building on her advocacy work with families of transgender children and youth, Dr. Manning launched the Critical Feminist Action and Research (CFAR) project in 2017. CFAR, which was supported financially by the Faculty of Arts and Science, was a three-year pilot project to create more inclusive processes and practices within Concordia. More recently, Dr.Manning has served as a Faculty Equity Advisor within the Faculty of Arts and Science; acted as faculty lead on the 2019 student- and community-led visioning process called “Filipino-Canadian Futures;" and is part of a research team studying student experiences in the wake of the passage of Law 21, which prohibits public employees from wearing religious symbols. Dr Manning also recently served as a Co-Investigator and EDI-lead on a SSHRC-funded Strengths-Based Nursing Partnership Grant (2020-2024), on which she developed and co-facilitated a new training module in EDI

Research interests

POLI 202       Introduction to Political Science
POLI 203       Introduction to Comparative Politics
POLI 335       Politics of China

Books

Revolutionary Attachments: Party Families and the Gendered Origins of Chinese State Power. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2023

Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine. Co-editor with Felix Wemheuer. Vancouver: U.B.C. Press, 2011. 

(Select) Articles and Chapters

“Reworlding the Canadian University: Centering Student Leadership in InstitutionalTransformation.” With Jamilah Dei Sharpe In Feministing in Political Science: A Manifesta for Change, edited by Fiona MacDonald, Stephanie Paterson, Ethel Tungohan, Nisha Nath, and Alana Cattapan, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2024.

"Evaluation of the effectiveness of a Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare Leadership program aimed at building leadership capacity: A concurrent mixed-methods study." With Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay, Kathleen Boies,Christina Clausen, Julie Frechette, ChristinaGelsomini, Guylaine Cyr, Geneviève Lavigne, Bruce Gottlieb, and Laurie N.Gottlieb. International Journal of NursingStudies Advances (2024): 100184.

"Nursing leaders’ perceptions of the impact of the Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare Leadership program three months post training." With Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay, Mélanie, Kathleen Boies, Christina Clausen, Julie Frechette, Christina Gelsomini, Guylaine Cyr, Geneviève Lavigne, BruceGottlieb, and Laurie N. Gottlieb.International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances 6 (2024): 100190.

“Media Discourse in Canada on Trans Youth and ParentAdvocacy.” With Jennifer Dyer, Aphrodite Salas, Julie Temple Newhook,Simerpreet Khosa, Jennifer Davis, Julie James, Sarah Pickett, AnniePullen-Sansfaçon. Feminist Media Studies, November 2023.

"Affirmation and Safety: an Intersectional Analysis of Trans and Nonbinary Youths in Quebec" with Annie Pullen Sansfacon and Morgane Gelly. Social Work Research, 2021.

“Self-DirectedGroupwork and Social Action Research with Francophone Parents of Trans Childrenand Youth in Rural Quebec.” With Annie Pullen-Sansfaçon, Dominique Pineault, Jennifer Davis, Jennifer Dyer, Julie James, Julie Temple-Newhook, and Sarah Pickett. Group Work 30,no.1 (2021): 114-131.

« « On vous Tolère, mais on ne vous accepte pas » :luttes pour la reconnaissance des jeunes trans dans un contexte cisnormatif. »with Annie Pullen Sansfaçon, Alexandre Baril, Edward O.J. Lee, Marie-Édith Vigneau, and Maxime Faddoul. Revue canadienne de service social / Canadian Social Work Review 37 (1), 2020.

 “The Politics of Women’s Rights in the PRC (1949-2016)” (Eds.) Susan Franceschet, Mona Lena Krook, and Netina Tan, Global Handbook of Women’s Human Rights. London: Palgrave McMillan UK, 2019: 301-315

“Attached Advocacy and the Rights of the Trans Child.” CanadianJournal of Political Science 50, no. 2 (2017): 579–95.

 “Affirmation, Access, Autonomy: Canadian Parents Talk Trans Rights” with Akiko Asano, in Elizabeth Meyer and Annie Pullen Sansfaçon (eds), Supporting Transgender and Gender Creative Youth: Schools, Families, and Communities in Action, New York: Peter Lang (2nd Edition, 2017).

“Fighting for Trans* Kids: Academic ParentActivism in the 21st Century.” With Cindy Holmes, Annie Pullen Sansfacon, JuliaTemple Newhook, and Ann TraversStudies in Social Justice 9, no. 1 (2015):118–35.

 “Maximising Research Outcomes for Transgender Children and their Families in Canada: Using Social Action and Other Participatory Methods of Research” with Annie Pullen Sansfaçon, in Julie Fish and Kate Kargan (eds.), Social Work and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health Inequalities: International Perspectives, Bristol: Bristol University Policy Press, 2015: 223-236.

 “Introduction”with Elizabeth Meyer and Annie Pullen Sansfaçon, in Elizabeth Meyer and Annie Pullen Sansfaçon (eds), Supporting Transgender and Gender Creative Youth: Schools, Families, and Communities in Action, New York: Peter Lang, 2014.

“Embodied Activisms: The Case of the Mu Guiying Brigade,” The China Quarterly, 204, Dec. 2010: 850-869.

“Marxist Maternalism, Memory, and the Mobilization of Women during the Great Leap Forward,” The China Review 5(1), Spring 2005: 83-110.  Revised and republished as “Communes, Canteens, and Crèches: The Gendered Politics of Remembering the Great Leap Forward,” in Ching Kwan Lee and Guobin Yang (eds.), Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution, Woodrow Wilson Press and Stanford University Press,2007: 93-118.

“Making a Great Leap Forward? The Politics of Women’s Liberation in Maoist China,” Gender and History 18(3), November 2006: 565-585.  Republished in Dorothy Ko and Wang Zheng (eds.),Translating Feminisms in China, Blackwell, 2007.

“The Gendered Politics of Woman-work: Re-thinking Radicalism in the Great Leap Forward,” Modern China 32(3), July 2006: 349-384.

“Fil-Can Futures,” The Filipino Forum, August 2019.

 “Filipino Domestic Workers Deserve Equitable Employment,”(with Evelyn Calugay), The Globe and Mail, August 3, 2018.

 “Decriminalization of Sex Work is Essential,” Montreal Gazette, April 25, 2018.