The Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media is taking their research global. The institute, founded by the Academy Award-winning gender-equality advocate, is teaming up with the BFI London Film Festival and Women in Film and Television to launch the Institute’s first Global Symposium on Gender in Media to take place outside of the US.

The symposium will kick off on October 8, just one day after the festival opens with Sarah Gavron’s “Suffragette,” which chronicles British women’s fight for the right to vote.

BFI CEO Amanda Nevill CBE will introduce the first panel, a consideration of how films can influence global issues relating to girls and women.

“Media images have a huge impact on our perceptions and on our social and cultural beliefs and behaviors. Our new global study explores how global films may be reinforcing negative gender stereotypes with movie audiences of all ages,” said Davis.

The study investigates the effect of international films on audiences in the UK, India, Nigeria, France and Brazil, and will be presented at the Symposium.

“WFTV aims to empower women across all disciplines of film and television in an effort to redress not only the woeful under-representation of women in our industry, but also the all too frequent marginal roles on offer to women,” noted Elizabeth Karlsen, Chair of Women in Film and Television. “The collaboration with the BFI, who have a clear mandate to promote gender equality, and the Geena Davis Institute, whose research is integral to an understanding of the qualitative and quantitative representation of women in film, provides a much needed platform from which to incite change.”

Expect more global symposia in India and Brazil come 2016.

[via The BFI]