Genderscapes: The Global Circulation of Feminist Theories and Transregional Arab Debates
Swiss partners
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Universität Zürich: Bettina Dennerlein (main applicant), Sarah Farag
Partners in the MENA region
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Cairo University, Egypt: Hoda Elsadda (main applicant)
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Isis Center for Women and Development, Morocco: Fatima Sadiqi
Presentation of the projet
The project “Genderscapes: the Global Circulation of Feminist Theories and Transregional Arab Debates”, starting on July 1st 2019,was a joint collaboration between the University of Zurich, Cairo University and ISIS Centre for Women and Development.It has been completed successfully by achieving its main objective as outlined in the project proposal, which was the preparation and handing in of a full research project to the Swiss National Science Foundation in the field of Middle Eastern women’s and gender studies.
The long-standing network between the University of Zurich, Cairo University and ISIS Centre for Women and Developmentserved as a secure platformto create an entirely new research group among like-minded female early career researchers with complementary research interests from the International University in Rabat, Morocco, and Birzeit University, Palestine. In a slow bottom-up process of mutual dialogue and exchange, we were able to carve out the contours of a highly advanced, complex research project, where our individual research interests were given enough space to thrivewhile at the same time tied together by a strong theoretical framework. A first research outline was submitted as a pre-proposalin January 2020 to the SPIRIT programme (Swiss Programme for International Research by Scientific Investigation Teams) of the SNSF. SPIRIT promotes team-oriented cross-border research between Swiss researchers and researchers in countries of the South that are receiving development assistance with a special focus on equal opportunities and the promotion of female scientists as well as to raising awareness of gender-specific questions. The submitted pre-proposal under the title “Gender, Politics and Cultural Critique in the MENA, 1970s until Today” was conceived as a tentative outline for a critical rewriting of knowledge production in the field of women’s and gender studies in the Arabic-speaking MENA from a contemporary perspective as an interdisciplinary project covering the fields of Islamic/Middle East Studies, Gender Studies, Political Science and Anthropology. After the successful acceptance of the pre-proposal, we were able to substantially develop the project ideas and finally submit the full proposal on June 1st 2020. The full research proposal is conceived as a substantial enhancement of critical history writing on feminism in the Arabic-speaking MENA region. It aims at analysing non-dominant articulations of feminism and gender as situated transformational struggles and as variously configured sites of entangled histories of political thought and gender critique across the region, tracing their distinct itineraries from the 1970s until today. The project does so by means of three systematically connected and complementary sub-projects located in Morocco, Egypt and Palestine, focusing on specific political dynamics resulting out of state-led Islamic reform (Morocco), militarist nationalism (Egypt) and the Post-Oslo state-building processes with ongoing military occupation (Palestine). The full project application was designed for a project duration over 42 months, starting on February 1st 2021, with an overall budget of CHF 499’775. The submitted research project was approved of for funding by the SNSF and has been assigned to the highest quality level upon evaluation, with the full amount of funding granted as requested. The successfully accepted project started in early 2021 as planned. A virtual kick-off workshop in April 2021 was the first official event organised by the project in order to communicate its contents to a broader academic audience. The workshop was simultaneously held in English and Arabic and included, next to individual presentations of the subprojects, renowned experts in their respective fields as both input speakers and discussants.