Doing Gender Studies: Producing Knowledge Otherwise

Abstract

This volume is rooted in a commitment to epistemic justice in times of rising precarity in academia. It seeks to question the hegemonic definitions of ‘doing research’. Commitment to gender studies, as the title suggests, is already an assurance to a form of research that is ‘otherwise’ – one that looks beyond neoliberal, competitive, and individual-driven agendas. Moreover, the anthology is an attempt to unfollow hierarchies, confront oppressive structures and question taken-for-grantedness in disciplinary knowledge production. The contributors are part of the Inter-university Doctoral Program Gender Studies CH at the universities of Basel, Bern and Zürich. They consist of professors, doctoral students, coordinators and further scholars, that belong to the wider network. They have all ‘done’ gender studies in various transnational and transdisciplinary contexts. Reflections on how knowledge is produced are thus nurtured by diverse networks of feminist solidarity, an ethics of care and a politics of situated research(ers). Authors engage with the politics of such an ‘otherwise’ in their respective contexts to illuminate intersubjective and collaborative ways of ‘doing gender studies’ and of ‘producing research otherwise’.