Feminist Research Institute Awards Interdisciplinary Feminist Research Projects Across Campus

Claire Napawan, an associate professor in landscape architecture and environmental design, and Sahoko Yui, a graduate student in geology (not pictured) received a seed grant for their project, Women’s Work: Feminist Perspectives on Food Waste, Sustainability, and Environmental Design.
April 5, 2017
The Feminist Research Institute (FRI) at UC Davis awarded a total of $46,000 to six interdisciplinary feminist research projects in its 2017-18 Seed Grant Competition. The annual competition supports collaborative faculty projects that use feminist approaches to engage in transformative, trans-disciplinary research.
The projects funded for 2017-18 address an impressive range of issues informed by feminist approaches, including food waste and sustainability, HIV prevention practices, citizenship, scientific archives, access to sanitation, and discourses of gender and adolescence. Faculty principal investigators from eight programs and departments—from History, Russian, and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies to Nursing, Political Science, and Civil and Environmental Engineering—will carry out the projects.
“This year FRI had an embarrassment of riches to choose from,” said Laura Grindstaff, FRI Director and Professor of Sociology at UC Davis. “It was gratifying and humbling to evaluate so many top-notch proposals focused on collaborative feminist research from all corners of the campus. We look forward to expanding the seed-grant program in the future so we can extend the reach of our support,” she added.
The 2017-18 seed grant recipients
- Linking Lack of Sanitation, Water, Menstrual Hygiene and Energy to Gender Disparity in Rural Kenya
Project Leader: Maureen Njoki Kinyua (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
- Feminist Activist Sciences and Their Archives
Project Leaders: Sara Giordano and Rana Jaleel (Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies) - Women’s Work: Feminist Perspectives on Food Waste, Sustainability, and Environmental Design
Project Leaders: Claire Napawan (Landscape Architecture) and Sahoko Yui (Geography)
- Women Immigrants and Access to Citizenship
Project Leader: Jeannette Money (Political Science)
- Interdisciplinary Comparative Feminist Research on Discourses of Gender and Adolescence
Project Leaders: Liz Constable (Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies), Corrie Decker (History), and Jenny Kaminer (Russian)
- Empowerment or Further Assault on Female Autonomy? Exploring Issues of Race, Class, and Power in Post-Sexual Assault HIV Prevention
Project Leader: Jessica Draughon Moret (School of Nursing)
About the Institute
The Feminist Research Institute aims to build connections throughout the UC Davis campus by drawing together feminist researchers from different disciplines to address pressing social issues.
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Media Contact
- Sarah McCullough, Feminist Research Institute Associate Director, smcc@ucdavis.edu