Global Gender and Cultures of Equality (GlobalGRACE)

Project partners: University of Cape Town, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, University of the Philippines, University Autonomous of Chiapas (UNACH)

NGO partners: SWEAT (South Africa), IDEA (Bangladesh), YMCA Rinali (Philippines), IMJA Promundo, Observatoria de Favelas (Brazil), VocesmesoAmericanas (Mexico)

Team

Professor Suzanne Clisby (Co-Director, Coventry University's Centre for Global Learning), Dr Mark Johnson (Co-Director and Principal Investigator, Goldsmiths College), Dr Nirmal Puwar (Goldsmiths College), Dr Yasmin Gunaratnam (Goldsmiths College), Ms Yaliwe Clarke (University of Cape Town), Ms Sara Matchett (University of Cape Town), Dr Tanzina Choudhury (Shahjalal University of Science & Technology), Dr Marta Regina Fernández y Garcia Moreno (Pontifical Catholic Un of Rio de Janeiro), Professor J Neil Garcia (University of the Philippines), Professor Pável Valenzuela (University Autonomous of Chiapas)

Duration

1 October 2017 to 31 December 2021

Project overview

Global Gender and Cultures of Equality is a 51 month programme of research and capacity strengthening funded by the RCUK’s Global Challenge Research Fund (GCRF) delivered through the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

GlobalGRACE employs artistic interventions, curatorial research practice and public exhibitions to investigate and enable gender positive approaches to wellbeing internationally, addressing two key UN global Sustainable Development Goals, Gender Equality (SDG5) and Health and Wellbeing (SDG3). Led by a team of researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London, GlobalGRACE brings together academic and non-academic partners from Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa and the UK, as well as consultants from Europe and the USA, to work collaboratively on six interlinked research work packages.

Underpinning those projects are three basic organising ideas. The first is that equality is a cultural artefact: we investigate the variety of ways that equalities are made and contested in different parts of the world. The second is that cultures might best be understood as the practices through which people create the worlds they inhabit: we investigate how people’s creative practices challenge inequality and engender new possibilities for more equitable ways of living together. The third is the commitment to recognise people’s hard-won achievements and their ongoing struggles: GlobalGRACE is working with partners to highlight just a few examples of this equality work worldwide.

Attending to, learning from and sharing about the productions of cultures of equality globally is central to creating sustainable futures for us all.

Project objectives

1. Build research capacity and grow the capabilities of interdisciplinary feminist, queer and gender studies researchers internationally
2. Create collaborative partnerships between academics and people and organisations working with women, men and transgender people in fragile contexts in developing countries
3. Develop multi-sensory methods to investigate and provide more meaningful accounts of people’s experiences of intersecting inequalities and their impacts on wellbeing
4. Facilitate the sharing and translation of creative and critical cultural competencies within and beyond academia
5. Increase the global social impacts of the arts and arts-based research practices to
   1. challenge gendered inequalities
   2. enhance people’s wellbeing and
   3. produce cultures of equality that contribute to people’s sustainable economic development and welfare

Impact

The outcome of our research will impact on and promote the development and welfare of the countries within which we are doing research in the following ways:

1. For people living in fragile contexts it creates opportunities to creatively convey something of the everyday and embodied impacts of intersecting inequalities on their wellbeing and make visible the way that their own work and lives contribute to making cultures of equality ‘otherwise’.
2. For organisations working with people in these contexts it will increase investment in, and participation of, marginalised people in the work of civic organisations and stimulate expanded use of art and other performative events to stimulate critical conversations about the relation between gender and development, wellbeing and the production of cultures of equality.
3. For policy makers and other advocacy groups the research will impact in three ways: cultivate an enhanced awareness of the relation between intersecting inequalities and diminished wellbeing, generate better appreciation of the way that NGOs and other project partners are meeting the welfare needs of marginalised peoples and pressing for changes to address the underlying issues of inequality; and create opportunities to consider whether, and if so how, official equalities discourse may be critiqued and extended through engagement and encounter alternative visions and versions of equality.

In addition to the new and extended transnational partnerships created by GlobalGRACE, the legacy of the project will be principally realised through the following:

1. The material and virtual Global Museum of Equalities.
2. The establishment of a digital archive from across the six GlobalGRACE work packages.
3. The production of a GlobalGRACE book series and various forms of textual and visual dissemination (see below)
4. The development and launch of an open access Global Gender and Cultures of Equality online course

Outputs

GlobalGRACE Publications and Artistic Outputs to November 2020:

• Books
  • Clisby S (ed.) (2020) Gender, Sexuality and Identities of the Borderlands: Queering the Margins, London: Routledge.
  • Clisby S, Johnson M, Turner J (eds.) (2020) Theorising Cultures of Equality, London and New York: Routledge.
  • Garcia, J. Neil C (ed.) (2020) Busilak: New LGBTQ Poetry from the Philippines, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
  • Jacobo J & Sumayao RP (2019) BKL/Bikol Bakla: Anthology of Bikolnon Gay Trans Queer Writing, Naga, Philippines: Goldprint Publishing House, Inc.
• Journal special issue
  • Clisby S & Turner J (eds.) (2020) Special Issue on Creative Community Activism in Global Contexts, Studies on Home and Community Science.
• Book chapters
  • Choudhury T & Clisby S (2020) ‘Women Queering the Margins of Male Space? Female Construction Workers as ‘Border Bodies’ in Bangladesh. In: Clisby S (ed.) Gender, Sexuality and Identities of the Borderlands: Queering the Margins. London: Routledge. Pp. 167-185.
  • Clisby S (2020) ‘Framing the Margins: gender, sexuality, and identities of the borderlands’. In: Clisby S (ed.) Gender, Sexuality and Identities of the Borderlands: Queering the Margins. London: Routledge.
  • Clisby S & Johnson M (2020) ‘Theorising Gender and Cultures of Equality’. In: Clisby S, Johnson M, Turner J (eds.) Theorising Cultures of Equality, London and New York: Routledge. Pp.1-24.
  • Fernández M & Gill A (2018) ‘Coloniality of power, knowledge and modes of (des)authorization: Occupation practices in Brazilian schools and universities’. In: de Jong S, Icaza R & Rutazibwa OU (eds.) Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning, London: Routledge.
  • Garcia JN (2020) ‘Translating Homosexuality: Urbanism and the masculine bakla in Severino Montano’s The Lion and the Faun’. In: Clisby S, Johnson M, Turner J (eds.) Theorising Cultures of Equality, London and New York: Routledge. Pp.124-141.
  • Kisubi Mbasalaki P (forthcoming) ‘Female Masculinities in South Africa: Negotiating Belonging’ in Sifaki A. & Boulila S. C (eds) Teaching against Homo/Nationalism.
  • Moura T, Fernández M & Page V (2020) ‘Power from the Peripheries: Art, culture and masculinities in Rio de Janeiro’. In: Clisby S, Johnson M, Turner J (eds.) Theorising Cultures of Equality, London and New York: Routledge. Pp.158-170.
  • Negrón-Muntaner F (2020) ‘Decolonial Joy: Theorising from the art of Valor y Cambio’. In: Clisby S, Johnson M, Turner J (eds.) Theorising Cultures of Equality, London and New York: Routledge. Pp.171-194.
  • Stanford Friedman S (2020) ‘Why we need Literature, Art and Fantasy’. In: Clisby S, Johnson M, Turner J (eds.) Theorising Cultures of Equality, London and New York: Routledge. Pp.112-123.
  • Turner J (2020) ‘The City Animated by the Spirit of Patriarchy’. In: Clisby S, Johnson M, Turner J (eds.) Theorising Cultures of Equality, London and New York: Routledge. Pp.142-157.
• Artistic exhibitions

  2018

  • June to July – ‘Exchanging Cultures of Equality’ (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK). Collaborative work of all WPs.

  2019

  • March to December – ‘Migrant Museum Tour of the Highlands of Chiapas’ (Multiple Locations, Chiapas, Mexico). WP5.
  • May to June – ‘Migrant Museum Exhibition’ (Bela Maré art gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). WP5.
  • July – ‘Imagining Gender In/equality’ (Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh). WP2. 
  • November – ‘Masculinidades NoBela’ (Bela Maré art gallery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). WP3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DACqJvhMDCc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsMOm-YQ920

  2020

  • February – ‘Sylhet Community Festival’ (Sylhet, Bangladesh). WP2.
  • July to August – ‘Swimming Against the Tide: Women Doing ‘Men’s’ Work in Bangladesh’ (Virtual). WP2.
• Performances

  2019

  • August – ‘Intando Yam: My Choice’ (Theatre Arts Admin Collective, Cape Town, South Africa). WP1.
  • October – ‘A likeness Embodied’ (University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa). WP1.
  • November – ‘Intando Yam: My Choice WhatsApp Soapie’ (Virtual). WP1.
  • November – ‘'Yeki’ Hambe: let it go' (Bindery Lab Theatre, Cape Town, South Africa). WP1.

  2020

  • September – ‘COVID WAARHEID / COVID’S TRUTH’ (Theatre Arts in Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa). WP1.
  • September – ‘Na Manha' (Arena Carioca Dicro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). WP3.
• Podcasts
  • Puwar N (2020) ‘Do Museums Care: Conversation with Museum De-Tox’