Research frame

The ways in which knowledge is produced and generates markers of categorization in regard to gender, sexuality, ethnicity/race, age, body abilities, and class, and how these are perpetuated in political discourses and interventions, are central to the department’s research. Scholars at the department therefore are vigilant to their own engagement in the production and use of knowledge. Against this backdrop, the department is committed to co-construct knowledge with colleagues from across the globe and challenge influential knowledge regimes through the exchange of intellectual perspectives, analyses, methods, and pedagogies.

To unravel skewed societal power balances and socio-economic and political inequalities, the department’s research is situated within a growing body of feminist, queer, trans, and postcolonial/decolonial studies which provide fertile analytical avenues to understand the complexities imbued in the crafting of genders, how these are rendered intelligible, and manifested structurally and on the ground. A body of rich data offer a window for scholars at the department to understand the ways in which the politics of gendered exclusion and unequal opportunities are experienced in daily life by people who are living in the world’s remote villages, burgeoning cities, and in the spaces in-between. 

Research at the department is informed by data acquired through the use of ethnographic methods (broadly defined). Techniques such as observations, interviews, focus group discussions, narratives, testimonies, and questionnaires serve scholars to capture the gendered dynamics of systems and lifeworlds and the ways in which these dynamics impact the (re)distribution of power and the (re)production of injustice. Data gathered through ethnographic methods are supplemented in departmental research by discourse analyses of texts and documents, genealogical archive studies, and statistical overviews. 

The department is engaged in bridging between academia and the ambient society. The research at the department, therefore, is created in dialogue with national and international partnerships including governmental bodies, civil society movements, agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).