About the project
Going beyond political ecology, Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) investigates how gender is reproduced in and through practices, policies and actions associated with our changing environments. Rooted in collaborative and action-focused methodologies, FPE analyzes the impacts of ecological and economic crises on diverse genders and the communities in which they live.
WEGO-ITN is a transnational network that brings together some of the most prominent scholars in the field to develop a research and training program to educate the next generation of FPE researchers. The network will look in detail at local communities' coping strategies to build resilient and sustainable futures. Ultimately, WEGO will provide guides to strategies that are required for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.
Objectives
The objectives of the project are:
- To establish a vibrant European network of excellence on FPE that will link researchers, communities and policy makers for maximum impact in the environment and development policy arena, and positive change for the communities involved in the research.
- To train a new generation of early stage researchers (ESRs) in a societally relevant research platform.
- To consolidate FPE as a key conceptual approach to resilience and sustainability by bringing fresh perspectives on gender to the policy space on environment and development being opened up by the Sustainable Development Goals.
Individual projects
Two of WEGO-ITN's individual Ph.D. research projects are hosted by the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo. Both projects are supervised by Prof. Andrea J. Nightingale and Prof. Karen O'Brien.
Ankita Shrestha : Enquiries on state, government, and the 'political subject' in Nepal
The ESR will engage in theorisations, debates, and empirical understandings of state and power broadly situated in the disciplines of political geography, political sociology, and intellectual history. Her PhD project attempts to study the concept of state and its many loci in Nepal, where political-historical established notions of state and its 'government' are challenged. Her research methodology centres on the study of the concepts of state and government through an ethnography of the 'political subject'.
The ESR will also engage in FPE research and critiques of political subjectivity.
Eoin Farrelly : Transformation of small-scale fishing communities
The ESR will look at the global crisis in small-scale fisheries due to interconnected ecological and social processes. The focus will be on the pressures experienced by small-scale fishing communities caused by the decline in European fish stocks, including the collapse of the in-shore herring fishery in Scotland, the decline in North Sea cod stocks, and a major collapse of Mediterranean fish stocks.
The research will take an FPE look at efforts towards common in coastal communities including guilds that have taken their fishing quotas out of speculation markets and formed alternative markets, and labeling to source fish back to particular boats and fishing techniques.
The ESR will outline how efforts in common are able to transform subjectivities and help create a sense of community and commitment to collective fishing practices, as well as transform market rationalities to alternative ideas of sustainable livelihoods.
Cooperation
The International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS-EUR) is the coordinating institute of the project. The University of Oslo is one of the consortium members.
For more information, please visit the WEGO-ITN website .
Financing
The project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 769,408.
Duration
January 1, 2018 - June 30, 2022.