Call for Transnational Research Project Proposals (Up to 30,000£ for Eighteen Months)

Deadline: 11-Dec-23

The Feminist Centre for Racial Justice is looking to support five, eighteen month transnational research projects.

The aim of this collaboration is to develop transnational relationships and shared knowledge, leading to the expansion of feminist, decolonial, and Indigenous strategies supporting self-determination and liberation.

The research question or problem should be defined clearly and demonstrate strong relevance to the theme. Trans disciplinary approaches and creative methodologies are welcome. The project should contribute to increasing their understandings and building new imaginaries around the intersections of racial and gender justice in relation to the theme.

Themes

• Five projects will explore and resist intersectional problematics of race in relation to one of the call’s five core themes.
  • Reparations: resisting historical and contemporary injustices through decolonial feminism
    • Reparations for colonial crimes have become a focal point for scholarly, public debate, and grassroots movements across the world. The call for reparations encapsulates violence and harm, but also serves as a rallying point for collective action through transnational collaborations, amplified through South-South cooperation.
    • They invite research projects that will explore one or more of the following issues:
      • Strategies of redress that are not constricted by traditional statutory time limitations across diverse regions and their unique historical contexts.
      • Activist strategies, contribution, and political mobilisation for reparations.
  • Migrant domestic workers in the Arab Region
    • Across the Arab region and beyond, women migrant domestic workers frequently find themselves in highly exploitative circumstances. They are often situated at the intersections of several modes of societal exclusion from legal to spatial to social. Still, they exercise their agency to enact solidarity and resistance – from organising mutual aid projects to performing everyday resistance in the digital sphere. Solidaristic initiatives have emerged at the local, national, and regional level, with over twenty collectives, organisations, and unions actively organising around the needs and interests of African migrant domestic workers across Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, and Lebanon.
    • They invite research projects that will explore one or more of the following issues:
      • Formal/legalistic and ‘everyday’ methods and modes of resistance of migrant women domestic workers, including in the digital and creative spheres.
      • Transnational mapping of the physical spaces and geographies across which migrant women domestic workers’ organising spans.
      • Links and flows amongst anti-sexist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist efforts and the collective mobilisation of migrant women domestic workers across the Arab region.
  • Anti-Blackness and health inequalities in Europe
    • Anti-Blackness continues to shape unequal health outcomes globally. European states are failing to collect data about their Black populations, exacerbating these issues and potential policy responses. On the ground, collaborations between civil society organisations, scholars, and grassroots groups are already producing crucial research which name and address the complex intersections of race, gender, and health inequalities. Further research can support these efforts.
    • They invite research projects that will analyse and respond to anti-Blackness in healthcare by focusing on one or more of the following issues:
      • Exploring methods to record race and/or ethnicity data to evidence and compare health inequalities across countries and regions.
      • The racialised and intersectional experiences of Black and global majority healthcare workers across European countries.
      • Links and flows amongst disability, LGBTQIA+, feminist, Indigenous and racial justice organising around healthcare.
  • Black, feminist, and Indigenous ecologies
    • Despite having historically emitted the least carbon emissions, the lives and livelihoods of global majority communities are being seriously disrupted by climate change and ecologically breakdown. Hegemonic green philosophies have historically been dominated by accounts centring the views and experiences of (well to do) white people in the Global North. Scholars, artists, and activists across the world have called for a more explicit reckoning with the relevance of intersecting social inequalities, injustices, and marginalisation as forces which shape and are shaped by a rapidly changing biosphere.
    • They invite research projects that will explore one or more of the following issues:
      • Local and transnational movements of global majority communities against environmental degradation and climate change (given the existing expertise and research areas of researchers at FCRJ, they have a particular but not exclusive interest in anti-colonial and feminist mobilisation around toxic chemical pollution in Martinique and Guadeloupe as well as other regions).
      • Mapping the material effects of sustainability policy in the Global North on Global South countries and movements which respond to these effects.
      • The intersections of race, migration, and climate change.
  • Queer movements and LGBTQIA+ justice across Lusophone Africa
    • They are witnessing the resurgence of anti-gender movements organising transnationally against comprehensive sexuality education, bodily autonomy (abortion rights), queer rights, and anti-trans lobbies which resource and influence legislation and policies across the globe. Debates on same-sex sexualities and transphobia have manifested in legislative challenges. Feminist scholars have argued that there is a shared ideological base between far-right movements that pursue white nationalism as a basis to define Euro-American identity and gender critical arguments that draw on gender essentialist arguments to define heteronormative and homonormative ideals.
    • They invite research projects that will explore one or more of the following issues:
      • Mapping local and transnational solidarity actions, praxis and thinking around gender and LGBTQIA+ justice across Lusophone Africa.
      • Building frameworks that challenge the essentialist and victimisation paradigm around gender and LGBTQIA+ issues.
      • Developing and building strong transnational networks across Lusophone Africa and beyond, which strengthen the sexual rights and gendered autonomy of LGBTQIA+ communities.

Funding Information

• Each project will be funded up to 30,000£ for eighteen months. Projects should be scheduled to finish by the end of June 2025.

Deliverables

• Successful applicants are required to provide:
  • Progress report at the halfway point of the project timeline.
  • Attend mid-project Collaboratory workshop hosted by FCRJ either in person or online (September 2024).
  • Position paper to be published online (between 6,000 and 9,000 words) or a significant creative output (such as a short film, performance, or a pamphlet).
  • Impact report detailing the impact and outcomes of the project.
  • A presentation about the project to be delivered at an FCRJ event either online or in person (June 2025).

Eligibility and Suitability

• They are interested in pilot studies, exploratory research, and full projects from teams that bring together scholars and activists from at least two of these regions: Africa, Latin America, Middle East, and the Caribbean.
• This call is open to a transdisciplinary, transnational team of researchers that work on racial justice at the intersection of feminist, queer, decolonial, disability justice, and Indigenous approaches. They use the term researcher to refer to all the applicants involved in the delivery of any project proposal.
• The teams should have a co-leadership model between academic researchers and those located outside the formal academy.
• The projects should be intentional about working across at least two of FCRJ’s focus regions.
• All core team members roles should be clearly defined, and their contribution named
• Where partnerships are with organisations, formal letters naming the partners engagement with the project should be provided.
• The co-leads will serve as the main contact points for the proposed project with FCRJ during the application and any further administrative processes.
• Applications must evidence the capacity and skills within the project team to undertake the proposed project.

For more information, visit FCRJ.