CSWS announces 2025-26 Research Interest Groups

Posted by Jenee Wilde on
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CSWS is awarding grant support to four new and three renewing Research Interest Groups (RIGs) spanning the social sciences, humanities, law, and education for the 2025-26 academic year.

These small grants allow faculty and graduate students to organize interdisciplinary groups that explore and examine the complex nature of gender identities and inequalities. RIGs help to fulfill feminist research, education, networking, and collaboration needs on campus by providing support for reading groups, guest speakers, workshops, symposia, and more.

CSWS began awarding Research Interest Group development grants in 1994 to support intentional communities of scholars with shared interests. Many important research initiatives have grown from RIG seed funding over the last three decades, including the Feminist Humanities Project, the Wired Humanities Project, and the Women’s Health and Aging Research Initiative. RIGs have also incubated organizations such as the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies and the Fembot Collective, an international body of feminist media activist, artists, producers, and scholars who have produced many projects, including Ada: a Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology.

Below are the RIGs for 2025-26. Please reach out to coordinators to learn more about how to participate:

New RIGs:

  • Considering Contemporary Women’s Studies and Black Studies Contributions to Postfoundational Methodological Thought in the Social Sciences (Lisa Mazzei, Education Studies, mazzei@uoregon.edu) – a reading group to discuss contemporary feminist philosophy of science and social science, Black studies and Black feminist theories of inquiry, and anti-oppressive scholarship.

  • Feminist Science & Technology Studies (Olivia Matsuoka, English, onm@uoregon.edu) – a reading group for literature, comics, digital humanities projects, video games, and other texts related to feminist science and technology studies.

  • Gender, Nation, and Mediterranean Mobilities (Michelle McKinley, Law, michelle@uoregon.edu) – a networking and collaborative space for scholars focused on themes of gender, race, and mobility in the Mediterranean, including reading discussions, works in progress talks, and invited speaker panels.

  • Pedagogistas: Feminist Pedagogies Lab (Kristin Yarris, WGSS, keyarris@uoregon.edu) – a space for sharing resources, collective support, and collaborative knowledge production through cowritten articles and podcasting.

Renewing RIGs: 

  • Decolonial, Feminist Futures of Comics Studies (Anu Sugathan, English, asugatha@uoregon.edu) – a reading group to discuss texts that support the an inquiry into the future of comics studies through antiracist, feminist, ecocritical, and interdisciplinary approaches, as well as hosting guest speakers and panels in collaboration with community partners.

  • Decolonial Philosophies Collaboratory (Sanjula Rajat, Philosophy, srajat@uoregon.edu) – a collaborative space for workshopping graduate student research on decolonial feminism(s), as well as organizing a transnational interdisciplinary conference on the theme of “Decolonization and Global Justice.”

  • Intersectional Theory Primer for Psychology Students (Gretchen Nihill, psychology, gnihill@uoregon.edu) – a reading group and guest speakers to provide a strong theoretical foundation in intersectionality frameworks within subdisciplines of psychology.

RIG applications are due by May 1 for the following academic year. For more information, go to csws.uoregon.edu/rig-funding.