Partnerships & Collaborations | Institute for Gender and Development Studies

Through a system of research affiliation, visiting researchers and scholars with interests in women and gender studies frequently associate with the IGDS. This allows the Institute to benefit from the knowledge and experience of the scholar through seminars, informal discussions and interaction with students. The visiting Research Affiliate and visiting US Fulbright Scholars programmes are two examples where each year a number of international scholars are attached to the Institute for collaboration on new and innovative research projects as well as teaching and learning.

Local and Regional

Grace Sirju-Charran
Biographies of Women in Science
Knowledge of women scientists in Trinidad and Tobago and their contributions to Science is limited. This project sought to compile and publish biographies of women scientists utilising data drawn from interviews with them. This research is useful for teaching at secondary and tertiary levels, for further reference and research purposes.

Dr. Rawwida Baksh
Transnational Feminist Movements: Knowledge, Power and Social Change
The OUP Handbook on Transnational Feminist Movements: Knowledge, Power and Social Change, an encyclopaedic collection of 40 essays by feminist scholars and activists globally, has two main aims: (1) to set out the historical, political, economic and social contexts in which transnational feminist movements (understood as the transnational mobilizing of organizations, networks, coalitions, campaigns and actions to advance women’s rights and gender equality) have emerged and burgeoned on the world stage since the 1970s to the present; and (2) to record the contributions made by transnational feminist movements to global knowledge, policy and social change. The Handbook covers 10 themes which include: feminist knowledge, theory and philosophy; organizing for change; body politics, health and well-being; human rights and gender justice; economic and social justice; citizenship, leadership, democracy and governance; conflict, militarism and peacebuilding; secularism and religious fundamentalisms; and feminist political ecology. Dr. Rawwida Baksh, lead editor, has been working out of the IGDS on the project, in collaboration with Dr. Wendy Harcourt of the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. The 1,000+ page Handbook is being published by Oxford University Press as part of its Political Science series, in online and print versions (forthcoming 2014). The Handbook is expected to be launched by OUP in celebration of Beijing+20, at the UN Commission on the Status of Women, in New York in March 2015.

International

Univ. of Reading, Alison Donnell
Brooklyn College, Rosamond S. King
Susquehanna University, Angelique Nixon
Critical Sexuality Studies: Theory and Practice
Collaborated to design and conduct the four-week short course — Critical Sexuality Studies: Theory and Practice — was designed and conducted by the team alongside other local affiliates is a short course on sexuality theory and research methodologies relevant to the Anglophone Caribbean included an overview of the field and addressed topics such as Research Methodologies, the Social Construction of Sexual Identities, Men and Masculinity, Sexuality in Politics and Public Policy and Sexual Rights.

Syracuse University, New York
Kishi Animashaun Ducre, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University. Dr. Ducre’s research interests include a diasporic comparison of Black women’s lives in environmentally-degraded environments and how they negotiate space. She was attached to the IGDS for the 2010/2011 academic year as a Visiting Fulbright Scholar to engage in research and teaching on gender, the environment and climate change and embarked on a Photovoice project which promotes the use of photography in communities.

University of Houston, Texas
Prior to joining the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston, Keith McNeal was Visiting Fulbright Scholar to the IGDS, UWI St. Augustine Unit for the 2011/2012 academic year (as recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Program Award for Gender, Culture and Sexuality). Dr McNeal returned to Trinidad in 2013 to carry out research for his new book project on the politics of sexuality and citizenship and conduct focus groups with youth which would complement and further extend his collaborative work on the Institute’s Gender, Sexuality and Implications for HIV/AIDS research project.

University of Maryland – College Park
Michelle Rowley, Associate Professor of Women Studies, University of Maryland – College Park. Dr. Rowley led the Women’s Studies Pilot Study Abroad Program in Transnational Feminism to Trinidad and Tobago hosted by the IGDS in January 2010 which comprised an upper-level undergraduate course entitled, ‘Gender, Sexuality and Globalization: Transnational Feminism and the Anglophone Caribbean’.

Baltimore City College, Maryland
Henrietta Hestick is a visiting researcher based at Baltimore City College in the USA. Dr Hestick’s current research interests are in the areas of gender-based violence and child sexual abuse. She was attached to the IGDS in 2009/2010 to engage in research in Trinidad on these research themes.

Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts
Diane Fox, Professor of Anthropology at Bridgewater State College and former Fulbright scholar to the IGDS in 2004 collaborated on the Gender and Water Research Project. she She also taught our specialised summer course, ‘Doing Ethnography: the Poetics and Politics of Qualitative Research’ in 2005, 2007 and 2009.

Emory University, Atlanta
Cultural Crossings: A Gender Image base This developed out of a collaborative initiative between Professor Patricia Mohammed of the IGDS and Dr. Edna Bay of Emory University, Atlanta. It drew on the research of these two scholars who have been collecting historical and contemporary images in and of the wider Caribbean, as well as in Benin, West Africa. The project attempts to pool the collected image data of both scholars along with relevant bibliographies and papers related to the specific project in varied formats. These are now accessible to scholars and students of the The University of the West Indies, Emory University and selected scholars and students in West Africa and elsewhere.

Northwestern University Law School, Chicago
Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law and former Fulbright scholar, was a research team member of the research project – Gender, Sexuality and the Implications for HIV and AIDS.

Saint John’s University
The Office of International Collaboration and Partnerships and the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, at UWI, St. Augustine and the Saint John’s University and College of Saint Benedict of Minnesota, USA, jointly convened a workshop entitled ‘Approaching Men’s’ Studies in a Gender Studies Context: Cross Cultural Initiatives’. The workshop brought together over 40 participants including students from SJU/CSB, colleagues from Hobart and William Smith College and Morehouse College in the USA and from The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.

University of California, Berkeley
In 2007 the IGDS, St. Augustine hosted a study abroad programme for students of this university. This was part of a three-country programme with the longest period (3 weeks) in Trinidad and Tobago.