2026 Fay Gale Lecture | 29 October 2026 | Adelaide University
Decades of feminist advertising scholarship has found the same representational patterns: rigid gender roles and stereotypes, narrow beauty ideals and pervasive sexualisation, reproducing a monolithic gender order. Yet despite sustained criticism, campaigning by activists and even concessions from industry, we are routinely faced with the same representations. And as advertising becomes increasingly personalised, algorithmic and creator-made in an attention economy, these patterns have persisted, intensified and become harder to name. So, why has so little changed?
This lecture argues that the answer lies in what becomes of objection itself. Associate Professor Lauren Gurrieri proposes representational harm as a way of understanding how advertising, as an institution, comes to constitute harmful gender norms and shift the threshold of what counts as acceptable – and how it does so out of the very objections raised against it. She makes the case for treating advertising as a setting for primary prevention, given its powerful cultural role in sustaining the underlying social conditions that drive violence against women.
The Fay Gale Lecture is named in honour of the late Professor Gwendoline Fay Gale AO (1932–2008), the first female President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (1997–2000) and an eminent human geographer, well-known for her contributions to academia, the advancement of women within academia, Indigenous studies and juvenile justice. The lecture, inaugurated in 2010, is presented annually by a distinguished social scientist and is open to the public. The lecture is jointly hosted by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender.
Events Details
About the Presenter
Associate Professor Lauren Gurrieri is a feminist consumer culture scholar whose research examines gender, consumption and the marketplace. Her work explores how advertising and social media platforms reproduce gendered inequalities and harms, with particular attention to gender-based violence.
Her research underpinned ‘Seeing is Believing’, Australia’s first national framework for gender equality in advertising, and continues to inform public debate, industry reform and policy on gender inequality in promotional cultures. She has been awarded more than $1.2 million in external competitive research funding, including from the Australian Research Council. She currently serves as President of GENMAC, an international feminist academic and advocacy organisation for scholars exploring the intersections of gender, markets and consumers.
Lauren is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, and Co-Director of the Centre for Organisations and Social Change at RMIT University.