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CODESRIA / SEPHIS programme is pleased to announce the 2009 session of its Lecture Tour series. The Lecture Tour series is an international academic forum that seeks to create a space for scholars from the South to discuss and express their ideas and share their perspectives on selected themes. It serves as an opportunity for Southern institutes or universities to invite a scholar with an established reputation from another area of the South, affiliated to a historic school or specific research approach, to present a series of public lectures and seminars on chosen themes.

CODESRIA/SEPHIS LECTURE TOUR 2009

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

CODESRIA / SEPHIS programme is pleased to announce the 2009 session of its Lecture Tour series. The Lecture Tour series is an international academic forum that seeks to create a space for scholars from the South to discuss and express their ideas and share their perspectives on selected themes. It serves as an opportunity for Southern institutes or universities to invite a scholar with an established reputation from another area of the South, affiliated to a historic school or specific research approach, to present a series of public lectures and seminars on chosen themes. The 2009 Lecture Tour session is scheduled for May 2009 and will cover the Southern Africa region.

The aim of Lecture Tour is to encourage the creation of professional ties, as well as a dynamic intellectual exchange amongst the different research traditions and networks in the South. The Lecture Tour provides the lecturer with an opportunity to meet and interact with colleagues and advanced research students, discuss thematic issues and academic programmes, and explore possibilities for collaboration. It also encourages the generation of debate and elaboration of critical analyses on the chosen theme, in order to promote a refined understanding of concepts which have an undeniable impact on the future of Southern societies.

In a bid to promote the development of a comparative perspective, a scholar from the host institution/country will be invited to discuss the guest lecturer’s paper and present a reflection on the same theme adapted to his/her country or sub-region. S/he will also moderate discussions on the theme, and more precisely on the lecturer’s text. The lecturer is expected to:

- Be available to for approximately three weeks to tour and give lectures/seminars
- Produce a relevant and unpublished paper, with a strong social/historical dimension, which can be published in the CODESRIA/SEPHIS series.
- Send the text of the lecture to CODESRIA at least six weeks before the actual tour starts.
- Meet with colleagues and research students, advise on academic programmes, and explore the possibilities for collaborative research.

Following the tour, the lecturer is expected to become an active member of the CODESRIA/SEPHIS network and will be encouraged to help forge strong South-South cooperative links by, inter alia, assisting with the organization of a lecture tour of her/his country/region by an African researcher. CODESRIA/SEPHIS will cover the travel costs of the lecturer and provide her/him with a daily per diem during the period of her/his tour of the African continent.

Theme - Women’s Movements in the History of the South
The lecture tour aims at contributing to the development of the South-South debate on this theme. The increasing involvement of women in the public sphere makes it necessary to open the debate and promote critical analyses on this theme. Women’s involvement in the public sphere has been mainly through Women's movements. Through this, profound and positive changes in the status and roles of women have occurred in the last 50 years. Women’s movements have been major actors in the rise of global civil society, promoting a gender sensitive approach to the resolution of vital economic, political and social processes. They have been a key force in the development of the existing international legal and normative framework for bringing to justice the perpetrators of violence against women and for the recognition by international bodies that violence against women is one of the main obstacles to development and peace.
While the importance of the role of women’s movements globally in the last 50 years is acknowledged, there is a poor record of historical reflections on women’s engagements of the public sphere in the South, at least in comparison with the abundant scientific production on this theme in the Anglo-Saxon Western world. This may be due principally to women in the South recording very little about their activism and their efforts to organise for their rights within their communities. Hence the richness and vibrancy, the centrality of the role of women and women’s movement in the key events that have defined the history of nations in the South in the last 50 years, especially post-colonial history, is unrecorded and invisible. Such alternative histories require a voice as they are a corpus of knowledge that reflect the reality of the existence of men, women and children in the South, and are a corrective prism through which developmental knowledge is interpreted and appropriated locally.

It is in order to give voice to the unrecorded histories of women’s movements in the South that the 2008-2010 cycle of lectures is consecrated to the elaboration of the theme “Women's Movements in the History of the Global South.” What is expected is a historically-grounded reflection of women’s engagement with the public sphere in the South through women’s movements. Such analysis will avoid the banalisation or limitation of the question to the issue simply of knowing whether women fulfil political responsibilities in a better or different way in comparison to men, or whether this depends more on the personal qualities of each individual, rather than on their sex. In the process of defining and implementing a strategy to promote a greater and fairer involvement of women in the economic sphere, analyses will have to take into account the intervening factors that are at play and the stakeholders that could influence those factors.

The lecturer in writing her text will also have to take into consideration issues such as a review of women’s involvement and representation in politics, in the context of the patriarchal conception of women’s role in Southern societies, and quantitative aspects and qualitative impacts of women’s representation in structures and processes of decision-making. The text will explore inclusion and exclusion processes of women into/out of the democratic processes in the Western mono-cultural conception of politics that makes a dichotomy between democracy and dictatorship, the new intellectual and theoretical context created by the crises accompanying structural adjustment programmes, as well as the efforts and attempts at renewing the practices and theories of post adjustment development and most importantly, globalisation.
The deadline for applications (to be written in English) is 15 March 2009. An international scientific committee will examine the dossier of all candidates by the end of March 2009. Incomplete and unnecessarily lengthy applications will not be considered. All email and faxed applications must be accompanied by a hard copy original version sent by post. Successful applicants will be notified immediately after the completion of the selection process.

Additional information about the Lecture Tour Programme can be obtained via:
- The CODESRIA web site: http://www.codesria.org
- The SEPHIS web site: http://www.sephis.org

All applications or requests for more information should be addressed to:

CODESRIA/SEPHIS Lecture Tour 2009
Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop, angle Canal IV
B.P. 3304, CP 18524
Dakar, Senegal
Fax: (221) 33 824 12 89
Tel: (221) 33 825 98 22/23
E-Mail: [email][email protected]