Department of Social Sciences awarded $126,000 grant for new research project

  • Thursday, November 8, 2018

A $126,000 grant has been awarded to Professor Leah Bassel from the Department of Social Sciences and Professor Akwugo Emejulu from the University of Warwick from the Open Society Foundation.

Entitled Women of Colour Resist, this six-nation comparative research project will examine how women of colour activists in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Spain organise and mobilise in Europe. The project will aim to explore how women of colour activists struggle against the inter-related issues of:

  • The unprecedented reductions to social welfare spending and the privatisations of social welfare states across Europe
  • The political, policy and public opinion backlash against migrants in relation to increased surveillance, detentions and deportations 
  • The electoral gains of far right parties, mainstreaming of extremist language and spike in racist and xenophobic hate crimes. 

Professor Bassel said ‘This project is a unique opportunity to learn from the struggles of women of colour in the face of austerity, backlash against migrants and the rise of the far right and racist hate crimes.  Through our study of creative and subversive responses to these challenges across Europe we will show the power of activism at the intersections of race, class, gender and legal status and the new forms of solidarity and social justice that emerge.’

The project builds upon a British Academy-funded project Minority Women’s Activism in Tough Times. Professor Bassel and Professor Akwugo Emejulu have written a book entitled Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain. 

The Department of Social Sciences is ranked 6th in the UK for the impact of our Social Sciences research (Research Excellence Framework 2014).