GenCen Announces Fall 2025 SPG Awardees:  

GenCen is pleased to announce the following Fall 2025 Strategic Partnership Grant awardees. 

Advancing Institutional Courage Across Africa 

Through their project Expanding Capacity for Dissemination to Promote Institutional Courage, led by  Heather McCauley (School of Social Work), Katie Gregory (Psychology), and Anthonia Achike (Gender & Development Policy Centre, University of Nigeria Nsukka) will lead a multi-institutional effort to strengthen gender-based violence prevention in higher education systems across Africa. The project builds on UNN’s significant groundwork (baseline studies, campus symposia, and the launch of a whistle-blowing portal), and aims to enhance evaluation, monitoring, and long-term dissemination strategies for institutional-courage–based interventions. Core expected outcomes include strengthening MSU-UNN research ties, refining external-grant application, and co-designing dissemination tools to institutionalize comprehensive sexual-misconduct policy implementation across regional universities. This collaboration spans MSU’s School of Social Work, Department of Psychology, GenCen, and UNN’s GenCent, illustrating GenCen’s commitment to intersectional, globally engaged scholarship that drives policy change and gender justice. 

Supporting Interdisciplinary Women Scholars in Water & Health in Nigeria 

Trixie Smith (MSU WRAC), Rebecca Malouin (MSU Family & Community Medicine), and colleagues at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), Nkechi Onah (Religion & Gender Studies), Anthonia Achike (Agricultural Economics), and Vincent Chigor (Microbiology) will engage in a collaborative project, Supporting Research, Writing, and Publications in Interdisciplinary Water and Health Scholarship, that aims to strengthen the research and publication capacity of women scholars working at the intersections of water, health, environment, and gender. Through a series of writing workshops, mentoring sessions, and a dedicated write-in held alongside UNN’s International Conference on Water in Africa (ICWA), the project will offer structured support for women faculty and graduate students pursuing interdisciplinary research. Activities will take place in Lagos and Nsukka, Nigeria, culminating in joint planning for future research outputs and external grant proposals. Key outcomes include expanded MSU–UNN research networks, strengthened pathways for women’s scholarly productivity, and new cross-college collaborations linking MSU’s College of Arts & Letters and College of Osteopathic Medicine with UNN’s Gender and Policy Centre, Agricultural Economics, and Biological Sciences departments. This partnership directly advances GenCen’s priorities in gender equity, environmental justice, and global knowledge production. 

Bridging Academia and Community in Tanzania 

Bridging Academia and Community: Faculty Training in Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) and Livelihood Needs Assessment in Naitolia, Tanzania, are led by Jonathan Choti (MSU Linguistics, Languages & Cultures), Marcie Cowley (MSU Center for Integrative Studies in Social Science), and Vicky Moshy (University of Dar es Salaam, Institute of Resource Assessment).  The project aims to strengthen cross-institutional collaboration focused on gender, environment, and community sustainability. The grant supports pre-travel virtual workshops followed by on-site collaboration in Naitolia Village, Tanzania, where the team will conduct faculty training in CEL pedagogy and co-develop a culturally grounded methodology for assessing women’s livelihood needs. Activities include community-based data collection, collaborative analysis, and a joint literature review that will serve as the foundation for a future external research proposal. Expected outcomes include advancing gender-responsive scholarship on Maasai women’s resilience, generating participatory research tools, and building a sustainable MSU-UDSM research network. The project also deepens engagement with Tanzanian partners through ongoing collaborations with the Tanzania Partnership Program (TPP) and the African Studies Center. This initiative directly advances GenCen priorities in empowerment and poverty eradication, environmental justice, and gender equity, modeling how collaborative, community-engaged research can produce meaningful global impact. 

Mapping Gender, Domesticity, and Space Across the Early Modern World 

Home and the World: The Lives of Early Modern Women, is an ambitious, multi-sited research collaboration led by Samira Fathi (MSU Art, Art History & Design), Shayan Rajani (MSU History), and Nadhra Shahbaz Khan (LUMS, Pakistan). This project examines how domestic architecture in nineteenth-century Morocco, Iran, and Sikh-era Lahore shaped gender relations, social life, and everyday experiences. With SPG support, the team will undertake fieldwork in Morocco (Fes, Marrakesh, Rabat) and Pakistan, documenting liminal spaces (such as rooftops, courtyards, balconies, and screened enclosures) that structured women’s mobility, sociability, and authority within and beyond the home. Concurrently, the researchers will produce detailed site maps, photographic documentation, and architectural elevations of historic mansions in Lahore, including the Naunihal Singh Haveli. These materials will serve as the foundation for a January 2026 convening at MSU to refine a major external-grant application, including a proposal to the Getty Foundation’s “Connecting Art Histories” program. Expected outcomes include a multi-institutional workshop, an edited scholarly volume, future monographs, and the development of a digital archive integrating architecture, gender, and material culture. This collaboration spans MSU’s College of Arts & Letters, College of Social Science, and LUMS, advancing GenCen’s commitment to global, intersectional research on gender, space, and power.