Research Topic Title: Local Meets Global: Engaging with International Development Research, Policy and Practice around Gender and Social Transformation
My qualitative research sets out to understand how we can align different understandings of gender equality and women’s empowerment within the space of international development research, policy and practice. What are some of the possibilities, but also some of the risks and limitations, when gender-transformative programmes are implemented cross-culturally? I am investigating a particular case, a large-scale international non-governmental organisation’s (INGO) programme designed and implemented across the Global North and Global South, with a particular focus on Ghana, West Africa. Adopting a critical postcolonial feminist lens, drawing on African feminist scholarly work, I argue that spaces for transformative change are contested and try to identify whether and how these spaces might be co-produced in the context of international development work. I critically engage with questions around ‘rights and culture’ and how these discourses and approaches can be aligned in the case of gender-transformative interventions crossing boundaries in several ways. My interdisciplinary research can be of interest to scholars of gender and international development and, more broadly, those interested in gendered social justice.
Mentor/s: Dr Peace Medie, Associate Professor, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, UoB & Prof Mhairi Gibson, Professor of Anthropology
Publications
Froehlich, Fanny (Accepted/In press). Gender and Social Transformation. In The Bloomsbury Enyclopedia of Social Justice in Education: Gender and Sexuality, Volume 7. Edited by Prof. Marie Pierre Moreau.
Spencer, Grace; Thompson, Jill; Froehlich, Fanny; Kwankye, Stephen Owusu; Korleki, Dankye Ernestina (Accepted/In Press). Young People’s Involvement in Migration Research: Opportunities for Reshaping Priorities and Practices. In British Academy Journal.
Froehlich, Fanny (2021). Transnational and Local Concepts of Gender and Social Transformation in International Development Work: Understanding Normative Frameworks through Foregrounding Lived Realities in Ghana. Doctoral Thesis. University College London, UK.
Froehlich, Fanny (2018, June 5). Bartlett PhD Student Recounts Ghana Field Trip to Study Gender Roles and Language and Language. Blog. Available at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/news/2018/jun/bartlett-phd-student-recounts-ghana-field-trip-study-gender-roles-and-language
Froehlich, Fanny (2017, February 13). Young Girls and Social Norms: Challenges to Promoting Wellbeing and Equality. Blog. Available at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/development/news/2017/feb/young-girls-and-social-norms-challenges-promoting-well-being-and-equality
Froehlich, Fanny (2015). Die Erfindung einer afrikanischen Gesellschaft: Kwame Nkrumah und die Verbingung von Moderne und Tradition in Ghana. Saarbrücken: AV Akademikerverlag. [published in German; Title in English: The Invention of an African Society: Kwame Nkrumah and the Linking of Modernity and Tradition]
Contact Details:
E-mail: fanny.froehlich@bristol.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-fanny-froehlich-5b6886205/
X (Twitter): N/A
Website / Blog: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/fanny-froehlich