When describing her experience at the 1904 and the 1919 International Congresses of Women, American civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell remarked she was the only delegate ‘who had a drop of African blood in her veins’ (Rupp 1997, 74). Not only that, Terrell also described that this position placed her in the (unrequested) position of ‘representing the women of all the non-white countries in the world (ibid.). More than a century later, gender-focused spaces in global governance—which we understand as intergovernmental arenas of policy-making geared towards addressing gender inequality (Çağlar, Prügl, and Zwingel 2013b, 2)—continue to uphold this exclusion/inclusion paradox. For instance, there is a proliferation of discourses around shifting perspectives from ‘the local to the global’, of strengthening partnerships with ‘grassroots allies’, of enhancing development in the Global South, or of centring around ‘local knowledges’ to inform international policies (See, for instance, UN Women 2020; World Bank 2023; 2015). Nevertheless, the (‘feminist’) international gender experts working through the various international institutions in New York, Geneva, and The Hague are predominantly White, English-speaking, and Western and/or mobilize white feminisms which lead to the silence of Othered feminisms and forms of knowledge (Heathcote and Kula 2023)

Further, while the buzzwords of ‘intersectionality’ and ‘diversity’ have (arguably) been mainstreamed into gender talks at high-level fora of global decision-making, the feminisms that continue to inform those have been repeatedly identified as particularly Western-centric, notably by grounding themselves on notions of liberalism, capitalist progress, and individual empowerment (Cossman 2002; Halley 2006; Heathcote 2019; Halley, Kotiswaran, and Rebouché 2019; Carvalho and Uriburu 2022). Moreover, while the faces and the ‘lived experiences’ of Black and Brown women continue to populate foreign policy action plans and justifications for interventionism (Achilleos-Sarll 2020), these same women are censored, briefed, and curtailed from speaking on their practices and (feminist) ethos against capitalism, imperialism, and extractivism (Gibbings 2016).

Against this background, we propose working on a collective archive of the current state of non-dominant (i.e., non-White, non-Anglophone, and non-Western) feminist actors in their engagements with global governance. This is timely for two pressing reasons. First, with the growing anti-gender sentiment in global politics, especially considering the white supremacist undertones of its manifestations (see, for instance, Indelicato and Magalhães Lopes 2024; Kuhar and Paternotte 2017), there is a need to foster knowledge production where racialised feminist actors can reflect, connect, strategise, and support one another. Second, while scholarship exploring feminisms in global governance has focused on the (much-needed) critique of how Western feminisms hold a significant grip on high-level international institutions (Çağlar, Prügl, and Zwingel 2013a; Halley, Kotiswaran, and Rebouché 2019; Heathcote 2019), there is a need to build from such footholds to examine with more granularity how practitioners practising from a non-dominant feminist perspective in global governance navigate (and even subvert) these spaces.

To engage in such an endeavour, this call aims to gather contributions for a book project focusing on non-dominant feminisms in global governance. We envision this book as a wholly interdisciplinary endeavour, hoping to gather discussions at the intersection of international relations, international law, gender studies, linguistics, critical race theory, and third- and fourth-world critiques. For that, it will pick up on the longstanding (feminist) critique of how race, language, and colonially inherited hierarchies get intertwined with gender for dominance, exclusion, and silencing—but also on how looking at their intersections allows for organising around refusing, re-appropriating, or re-imagining the exclusionary systems they collectively effect (Daly and Caputi 1987; Tuck and Yang 2014).

As such, this book project would ultimately try to explore the question: What productive reimagining (or dismantling) of global governance and its overarching narratives and discourses can arise not only from looking at the different grammars produced by non-White, non-Anglophone, and non-Western feminisms but also from building an active political project of foregrounding them? From what follows, we are interested in
contributions that discuss questions such as:

(i) How languages, race, and gender play a role in forming a mainstream of feminist discourse in global governance, and other narratives and representations in international institutions;
(ii) How language, race, and gender delineate the boundaries of communities practising and doing global governance;
(iii) How the colonial perceptions of language shift our understanding of discourse and alternative frameworks;
(iv) Whether and how subaltern feminisms have developed alternative (and, sometimes, contrasting) linguistic, normative, and practical frameworks for global governance;
(v) How can subaltern feminisms impact how we research and critique global governance, particularly among scholars, students, practitioners, and researchers from the Global South.

While scholars from a variety of fields are invited to submit, abstracts submitted by scholars belonging to marginalised groups will be prioritised. Abstracts may be submitted by co-authors or collectives, as well as artists. The co-editors will review abstracts with the goal of creating a book proposal to be sent to a publishing house. After selecting contributions, authors will be invited to participate in a one-day workshop to collectively discuss and gain feedback on their chapters (see more below).

Submission instructions

To submit your abstract, please complete this form by 15 June 2025 at 23:59 (UTC+14) at the latest. Late submissions will unfortunately not be considered. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words. For any questions regarding submissions, you may write to: [email protected]

Convenors

• Juliana Santos de Carvalho (University of Cambridge)
• Lucia Kula (SOAS, University of London)
• Dena Kirpalani (Geneva Graduate Institute)
• Bérénice K. Schramm (Bahçeşehir University)

Workshop

Selected contributors will be invited to participate in a two-day workshop at the University of Cambridge between the 2nd and 3rd of October, 2025. To facilitate the attendance of Southern contributors, we hope to reserve three bursaries of £850.00 to cover (some) of travel costs. We will also offer to cover accommodation costs for bursary holders up to £150.00 per night, for four nights. If you wish to be considered for these bursaries, please tick the relevant box in the abstract submission form.

Timeline:

➔ 15 June 2025: Submission of abstracts
➔ 15 June – 15 July 2025: Review and selection of abstracts.
➔ 15 July 2025: Authors are informed of the co-editors decision.
➔ 1 September 2025: Submission of the book proposal to publishing house editors.
➔ 2-3 October 2025: Workshop at the University of Cambridge, UK.
➔ 15 January 2026: Submission of draft chapters.
➔ 15 Jan – 15 May 2026: Review and editing process.
➔ Fall 2026: Publication of the book.

Financial support and regulatory framework

This project is supported by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grants scheme, registered under grant number G132124. It follows the British Academy/Leverhulme Terms and Conditions for Small Grants and the University of Cambridge Research Ethics Framework.

Bibliography:

• Achilleos-Sarll, Columba. 2020. ‘“Seeing” the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Visual (Re) Productions of WPS in UK Government National Action Plans’. International Affairs 96 (6): 1643–63.
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• Carvalho, Juliana Santos de, and Justina Uriburu. 2022. ‘Problematising Diversity: The Change That International Lawyers (Do Not) Want for International Courts’. London Review of International Law, December. https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lrac020.
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