Moving Towards an Anti-Racist Feminist Political Science in Europe

This section is a direct follow-up to the actions initiated by the last ECPG 2023. Organisers and attendees of the section ‘Building an Anti-Racist Feminist Political Science in Europe’ at ECPG 2022 formulated concrete action items to move towards an anti-racist and feminist political science in Europe. The objective of this section is to spot the status quo, limitations and future opportunities for anti-racist and feminist work in Political Science. In doing so, the section consists of two broader roundtables and three specific panels. One learning from the last conference is the necessity to provide a safe(r) for BIPoC researchers where they can discuss the strategies when it comes to decolonising academia (a). Additionally, the challenges in embedding intersectional approaches in the classroom were addressed during almost all panels (b). Another learning from the last conference was that scholars are eager to exchange methods of what decolonial research actually entails and how it can be done(c). The last two panels of this proposed section pick up current debates in Feminist Political Science. First, the massive increase of political parties using anti-gender rhetoric and linking it to minoritised groups living in Europe, such as Sinti and Roma, Kurdish people etc.(d). Recently, this was observed in France’s racial profiling cases as well as Sweden’s Freedom of Speech cases. Second, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has (re-)triggered a debate about Feminism and Militarism. It has brought to the surface how feminist researchers outside of the Eurocentric powerhouses felt silenced and misunderstood, whereas feminist researchers from these Eurocentric powerhouses in academia struggled to find a position (e). • (a)Decolonising the University: We aim to organise a roundtable for BIPoC scholars at the conference. The title and the aim of the roundtable is “Creating Safe(r) Spaces in Political Science in Europe” and at the ECPG itself. • (b)Teaching Intersectionality: We aim to organise a roundtable where we scholars can discuss practical guidelines to embed intersectional approaches into the curriculum. • (c)Applying Decolonial and Feminist Methodologies: This panel dives into papers that actually apply feminist ethics and deal with positionality when doing feminist research in political science and outside the discipline. • (d)Spotting white Heteronormativity in EU/European Party Politics: This panel highlights the anti-gender rhetoric and the instrumentalisation of identity politics in EU/European Party Politics. • (e)Decentring Eurocentrism(s) in Peace and Security Research: This panel puts research in European Studies into the focus that is put by the dominant security discourse to the peripheries, e.g. research perspectives from Turkey and Eastern Europe. This section puts the work of non-white scholar at the centre. If you identify as white, please add a short paragraph that explains your positionality and added value for this section.