SU Gender and Raoul Wallenberg Institute (RWI) received the Swedish Institute Creative Force grant for the international collaborative project entitled "#Genderstruggles: Building Community Resilience via Creativity and Digital Media.” The project will start in January 2021 and last for 12 months. SU Gender researcher Zeynep Gülru Göker will coordinate the project with three external experts: Aslı Polatdemir (Bremen University), Olga Selin Hünler (Frei Universitesi) ve Selin Çağatay (Gothenburg Universitesi). At RWI, RWI Turkey program’s chief advisor İlhami Alkan Olsson and researcher & program advisor Aysel Madra will coordinate the project activities with contribution from Şebnem Keniş as external advisor.
"#Genderstruggles: Building Community Resilience via Creativity and Digital Media” aims to create digital platforms for the exchange of best practices, knowhow and expertise among feminist and LGBTI+ activists/activist-scholars in Turkey and Sweden to promote resilience in the face of anti-gender mobilizations. As part of the project, several digital participatory workshops will be organized around themes such as resistance strategies, digitalization, sustainability in a digital world, solidarity networks, community engagement and outreach. Narratives, drawings/illustrations produced during and upon gatherings will be posted on a website that will serve as a showcase of gender struggles, a vehicle of empowerment and a source of inspiration for a larger community of gender equality proponents and activists. With a transnational focus, the project will investigate the strategies of actors facing similar problems in different contexts, create a dialogic platform for the co-creation of knowledge on resistance and resilience in the face of anti-gender mobilizations.