WELCOME TO OUR FEMGEOG COLLECTIVE
Our Research
Our research examines the intersections of race, gender, class and coloniality in the making and remaking of place. While our projects are varied, we draw on feminist, anti-racist and decolonial political ecologies. Check out how students can get involved in our work below.
01
Developing & Displacing the 21st Century City: Mapping the Spatial Strategies & Impacts of Global Investment in East Africa
Caroline Faria & Brenda Boonabaana
The first project related to this work (2019-.) examines urban development and displacement in Kampala, Uganda. As one of the most rapidly and deeply neoliberalizing nation-states, Uganda has seen an influx of foreign and elite investment in recent years, dramatically transforming the capital city. In this project we examine some of the challenges of this kind of capital investment, including wetland loss, urban fires, building and landfill collapse. We also center the work of both city planners and local communities - most notably low-income women in navigating, resisting and place-making in the city. his project is funded by the National Science Foundation (#...).
Our second project builds on this work, examining oil development in Western Uganda and the creation of the world's longest heated oil pipeline to Tanzania. Students involved in these projects create maps from remotely sensed and participatory qualitative data, conduct archival and media analysis online and onsite at Makerere University, and conduct qualitative and ethnographic research in Uganda. T
02
Geographies of Displacement: Mexican Migrant/Refugee Children and Youth in the Sonora-Arizona Borderlands
Rebecca Torres & Caroline Faria
Led by Dr Torres, this project (2019-.) examines the drivers and impacts of displacement from Mexico into the USA. This is a bi-national project integrating a complex range of environmental, socio-cultural, geopolitical and economic factors to understand the gendered, classed and racialized nature of displacement in this region. The project centers the experiences of marginalized women and children, and includes research across the country, including: avocado growing regions of Guerrero, sites of environmental injustice in Michoacán, and areas impacted by cartel-state violence across the country. The project involves collaborations between domestic and international NGOs, government entities, advocates, Mexico-based scholars, and children's fiction authors through the creation of a Displaced Mexican Children/Youth Working Group. Students assist in this project via courtroom observations, qualitative interview transcription and analysis, and innovative uses of GIS eg via storymapping. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (#...).
03
Searching in Aluminum’s Shadows: Black Geographies & Industrial Toxicity
Pavithra Vasudevan
In Badin, North Carolina, a segregated aluminum company town, anti-Black racism and toxic wastes converge to shape the everyday lives and politics of Black residents. This project examines how residents experience, interpret and negotiate living with racialized toxicity, and what these experiences teach us about racial capitalism. This project seeks to redress the erasure of Black experience from histories of aluminum production, a form of activist scholarship that engages critical theoretical work in conversation with community organizing. The project includes a research play, “Race and Waste in an Aluminum Town,” which draws on interview excerpts, observation of community meetings, and archival materials to validate residents’ lived experiences of racialized toxicity and share these insights with broader publics. Students assist in this project via one on one research assistantships with Dr Vasudevan.
04
Building women smallholder farmers’ empowerment and adaptive capacities: A pathway to enhancing women’s resilience to climate change in Uganda.
Brenda Boonabaana
This project examines the roll out and impact of climate-appropriate and gender-responsive agriculture in East Africa, with a focus on Uganda and low-income rural women adopters. Students assisting in this project conduct qualitative research in Uganda, engage in qualitative data analysis of interviews and surveys. This project is funded by IDRC, CA, FCDO, UK, and USAID.
05
Brenda's Ecotourism project
Brenda Boonabaana
This project examines the roll out and impact of climate-appropriate and gender-responsive agriculture in East Africa, with a focus on Uganda and low-income rural women adopters. Students assisting in this project conduct qualitative research in Uganda, engage in qualitative data analysis of interviews and surveys. This project is funded by IDRC, CA, FCDO, UK, and USAID.
05
Laurel Mei-Singh
Laurel's project