New Tools for Transnational Analysis in Postgraduate Intersectional Gender Research
This international project, in which SKOK was a partner, aimed to strengthen the employability of doctoral candidates doing gender research.
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Aim of the project
One of the goals of the project is "to enhance the transnational quality of the gender research training in each of the participating universities and to strengthen the employability of the doctoral candidates focusing their research training on transnationalisation in terms of research contents and in terms of skills in transnational research coordination and interaction".
SKOK is one of the four collaboration partners in this project (see fact box). All the partners have hosted one conference. The project is funded by STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education). The final gathering took place at the University of the Western Cape this year.
At the core of the project is the exchange of affiliated PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who stayed in residence for 1-2 months at each location with the aim of establishing a research collaboration exploring the possibilities of improving tools for transnational analysis that transgress methodological nationalisms.
Furthermore, the project aimed to establish an international training milieu stimulating new research sensitive to the relationship between theoretical approaches and geopolitical contexts. The project thus builds on critically self-reflexive awareness of the meaning of contexts and transversal transnational dialogues. This is of utmost importance for the content and formats of postgraduate research in gender studies, especially as many geopolitical power relations, even within gender studies, often remain unchallenged.
Field work and conference
Redi Koobak, postdoctoral researcher at SKOK, who does research on the impact of the #MeToo moment on academia, was one of the participants in this final project meeting.
"The expected result of this project is an edited volume in the book series Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality", Koobak explains. She is one of the editors of the volume together with Nina Lykke, Madina Tlostanova, Petra Bakos, Swati Arora and Kharnita Mohamed. So among other things, this meeting was about wrapping up the book project.
"We also arranged a two-day writing workshop during our stay, a public event at the University of the Western Cape and a larger conference at Mont Fleur."
During her stay in South Africa Redi is also doing field research.
"I’m also doing fieldwork for my #MeToo project, interviewing feminist academics here. I will put the stories from the South African context in conversation with the stories from Norway."
