Workshop: Feminism in Research: MENA and Beyond, September 20-21, 2024

The workshop “Feminism in Research: MENA and Beyond” is organized by scholars from the research project “Gender, Politics and Critique in the MENA: Towards a Critical History of Feminism, 1970s until Today” funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
Presenting and discussing ongoing work in conversational settings, the workshop aims at rethinking epistemological, methodological, ethical and practical contours of researching feminisms as feminist scholars working on and in the Arabic-speaking MENA region. Based on the practical experience of two independently operating research networks between Switzerland and the MENA, this workshop builds on current conceptual debates for developing new perspectives on feminisms in the MENA region (Makdisi/Bayoumi/Sidawi 2014; Elsadda 2018). Specifically, it aims at exploring post-2011 formal and informal modes of non-dominant articulations of feminism across activism, art and research.
As widespread representations of feminism in the MENA remain based on a narrative of the colonial origin of women`s rights set in contrast to local discourses and dynamics of (re-)appropriation, the workshop will centre newly emerging articulations of feminism beyond preconceived definitions of feminism and/or political activism (El Said/Meari/Pratt 2015; Sadiqi 2016; Pratt 2020). Post-2011 articulations of feminist activism have deliberately moved beyond established political and ideological frameworks and sought to build alliances beyond social divides in searching for a holistic, intersectional and structural critique against injustices, violence, war, dispossession and destruction. Based on ongoing research on and from the MENA region, the workshop intends to open up new perspectives on such shifting forms of feminist critique and aims at grasping their specificality as variously configured sites of entangled histories of critique across the region.
This workshop furthermore aims at (self-)critically engaging with institutional settings and material conditions for collaborative research and academic knowledge production and at exploring avenues for mutual learning cutting across established boundaries between disciplines and institutions. Based on specific examples from collaborative debate and research, we are looking for perspectives and practices that draw on transformative methodological models and allow for ethically grounded forms of engaged scholarship.

Program details: Find flyer here (PDF, 282 KB)

Venue:

NIMAR, 3, Avenue Mohamed El Fassi 10010, Hassan Rabat, Morocco

Sponsored by Swiss National Science Foundation and Nimar