Call for Proposals
Research Grants Program (RGP) | Cycle 6 (2019-2020)
"Environmentalism, Impoverishment and Social Justice Movements: Interdisciplinary Perspectives"
Application form is available as of August 16, 2018
Application deadline: November 15, 2018
The Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) is pleased to announce the sixth cycle of its Research Grants Program on the theme of “Environmentalism, Impoverishment and Social Justice Movements: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” The ACSS Research Grants Program (RGP) is a funding opportunity that aims to support research across disciplinary boundaries and methodological approaches on key themes of concern to the Arab region.
This competition is funded by a grant provided to the ACSS by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Grants will be available to individual researchers (up to USD 20,000) and teams of researchers (up to USD 50,000) whose research focuses primarily on Arab societies. Priority will be given to researchers residing in the Arab region. Grants are intended to support a maximum timeline of 18 months, starting in April 2019 and ending in October 2020.
Topics and Methods of the Grant
The theme of the Research Grants Program for the 2019-2020 cycle is “Environmentalism, Impoverishment and Social Justice Movements: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” The competition aims at canvassing a broad range of research proposals from across the different countries and localities of the region. We also encourage comparative studies that look at more than one country or location regionally or globally. We particularly invite interdisciplinary proposals that link the social and natural sciences on one hand and that bring in approaches from the Historical, Humanities and Arts fields. Quantitative as well as qualitative projects are eligible and mixed-methods approaches are encouraged. Finally, successful proposals will also critically examine whether current social science frameworks are adequate to conceptualize and empirically study these issues in the Arab region, including their gender dimensions, and will suggest new approaches and methodologies.
The theme of this cycle examines the relationships between changing environmental conditions and processes of impoverishment in different contexts. A particular focus of interest is the study of political responses to such conditions and the emergence of socio-ecological movements in the Arab Region.
Among the topics that proposals could address are the following:
- The interplay between environmental, political and economic factors in shaping and reshaping life conditions including situations of displacement, marginality and de-development.
- The distribution of resources (especially scarce resources such as water) that create new ecologies shaped by political as much as ‘natural’ factors.
- The relationships between development policies, environmental impacts and the well-being of communities.
- Issues concerning environmental justice: this refers to equity, or the distribution of environmental ills and benefits, with the recognition of the diversity of the experiences in affected communities, according to class, gender, age and other factors.
- The relationship between environmental degradation and violence.
- The spatial dimensions of new ecologies and territories, such as the production of refugee encampments, no fly zones, safe havens, nature reserves, protected sites, etc.
- Political processes which create and manage environmental policies and approaches to sustainability.
- Transborder and global aspects of environmental change, environmental hazards and socio-ecological movements.
- The human relationship with the non-human world.
- Connections between work, labor and the environment with particular interest in the gendered nature of these relationships.
- Perceptions of science, technology and nature and the ways in which these perceptions affect understandings of risk and trust.
- Ecojustice education and the development of pedagogies that serve to conserve and sustain cultural diversity and the biodiversity of ecosystems.
- Changing urban and rural environments, including changing forms of land tenure and property ownership.
- Tangible and intangible cultural heritage and its relationships with environmental sustainability and economic well-being.
- Representation of environment, poverty, and social justice movements in expressive culture, literature, art, music, and performance.
>> http://www.theacss.org/pages/rgp-cycle6-call-for-proposals