7th Annual Maternal Gift Economy Movement Conference

Heide Goettner-Abendroth

Heide Goettner-Abendroth is a philosopher and researcher on culture and society, focused on matriarchal studies.

She is a mother and a grandmother. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy of science at the University of Munich where she lectured for ten years (1973-1983).

She has published on philosophy of science, and extensively on matriarchal society and culture, and through her lifelong research on matriarchal societies has become a founder of Modern Matriarchal Studies. Her magnum opus: Matriarchal Societies. Studies on Indigenous Cultures across the Globe, (New York 2013, Peter Lang) defines scientifically this new field of knowledge and provides a world tour of examples of contemporary matriarchal cultures.

In 1986, she founded the “International ACADEMY HAGIA for Matriarchal Studies” in Germany, and since then has been its director.

She guided three World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies: 2003 in Luxembourg, 2005 in Texas, U.S., and 2011 in Switzerland.

In 2012, she received an award for her scholarship from “The Association for the Study of Women & Mythology” in San Francisco. She was twice a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2005 by a Swiss initiative, 2007 by a finish initiative. More information @ International Academy HAGIA for Modern Matriarchal Studies and www.goettner-abendroth.de.

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Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Darcia Narvaez is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, and Fellow of the American Psychological Association, American Educational Research Association, Association for Psychological Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Born in Minnesota (USA), she grew up living around the world as a bilingual/bicultural Puerto Rican-German American but calls Earth her home. Her earlier careers include professional musician, business owner, classroom music teacher, classroom Spanish teacher, and seminarian, among other endeavors. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to studying evolved morality, child development and human flourishing. Her most recent books include Restoring the Kinship Worldview, and The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities. Her book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association and the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. Her recent short films are Breaking the Cycle, The Evolved Nest, and Reimagining Humanity. She hosts the webpage EvolvedNest.org and serves as president of KindredWorld.org.

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Heidi Howes and Lisa Woodward are the Co-founders and Co-Directors of Motherful, a collective of 600+ single mothers by single mothers in Central Ohio, USA whose mission is to support, empower, and nurture single mother families through education, community, resources, arts, and wellness. Focused on economic, reproductive, food, climate, and maternal justice with single mothers.

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Heidi Howes, Co-Founder and Co-Director

A single mother of two children for nearly a decade, Heidi is a Healing Artist, Musician, Writer, and Community Organizer whose passion is to create support and healing for mothers, communities, and the world.

Lisa Woodward, Co-Founder and Co-Director

Lisa was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio and studied Modern Dance. She is a single mother of three ladies and is a true Jack-Of-All-Trades. After relocating to New York in 1999, she studied fashion design, and started work as a Personal Assistant in the music industry. Lisa is a vegetarian and loves a garage sale.

More info @ www.motherful.org

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Sabina Santovetti

Sabina Santovetti is a 67 years old, mother, designer, artist, educatress, spiritual ecologist, in service to Mother Earth, the Goddess.

In the last 7 years she has abandoned her professional path of architecture where she ran a Boutique Architecture & Design Firm in Rome to devote herself to feminist spiritual ecological activism:

• being in activism for Extinction Rebellion;
• facilitating the Work that Reconnects and Community Building in the Transition Town Movement as a certified trainer;
• studying at the International Academy Hagia, Modern Matriarchal Studies with Heide Goettner-Abendroth
• and an M.A. in Ecological Design Thinking at Schumacher College in the U.K.;
• as well as re-thinking and embodying her life as a new journey of discovery, healing and dedicated commitment to develop new strategies of resilience
• to contrast 5000 years of women’s brutalization created by the patriarchal system.

Presently her eco-sophy and activism focuses on Matriarchal Feminism in the Movement MatriarchyNow! .She is the founder of Feminine Wisdom MatriCulture School in Narni, Italy where her programs She-EDE - Ecovillage Design Education are held since 2023.

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Genevieve Vaughan

Genevieve Vaughan is an independent researcher who lives part time in Italy and part in Texas. She created the multicultural all-woman activist Foundation for a Compassionate Society (1987-2005) and the Temple of Sekhmet in the Nevada desert (1992 – ongoing) and she co-created the network: International Feminists for a Gift Economy (2001 – ongoing). Her books are For-Giving, a Feminist Criticism of Exchange (1997), Homo Donans (2006), and The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning (2015). She has edited Il Dono/The Gift (2004), Women and the Gift Economy (2007), and The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy (2019). A volume of the Canadian Women’s Studies Journal dedicated to the maternal gift economy has just appeared (2020). More information @ www.gift-economy.com.