ISRF Newsletter – March 2026
The latest edition of the ISRF newsletter features a Director's Note on the politics of climate financing. Also included is details on our Flexible Grant competition, Fellows news & blog posts.
Contents
Director’s Note
Coercing Climate Finance
Christopher Newfield
ISRF are starting the month with a workshop called “Redesigning Finance for Climate Justice.” It culminates the first year of finance seminars led by the economist Daniela Gabor.
Throughout we have been aware that we were fighting an uphill battle. For eight or nine years after the Paris climate accord was signed in December 2015, politicians felt a duty to take climate change seriously, at least in what they said. That period has come to an end.
Global finance hasn’t opposed the climate Great Retreat, pushed by the world’s most belligerent climate change denier, Donald Trump. His actions include the dismantling of green industrial policy in the U.S., a re-withdrawal from the Paris climate accords, and continuous lobbying against EU climate rules. He seems determined to use the rest of the U.S. carbon budget on military mayhem and murder. From all this, top executives and many national leaders understood that they could drop the mask and evade whatever climate commitments they didn’t like.
Flexible Grants for Small Groups (FG12)
Deadline: 5pm GMT (6pm CET), Friday 13th March 2026
The Independent Social Research Foundation wishes to support independent-minded researchers to explore and present original research ideas which take new approaches, and suggest new solutions, to real world social problems.
The Foundation intends to award on a competitive basis, to candidates of sufficient merit, a number of grants providing flexible support (for instance: relief from teaching and/or administration, research and travel expenses, fieldwork and practical work) for a period of (up to) one year for the activities of a small research group.
Pourquoi la mise en œuvre de la durabilité échoue souvent, même quand tout le monde est d’accord
Lucas Amaral, Juliane Reinecke, Michael Etter
Businesses looking to introduce sustainability initiatives face a range of challenges - from adjusting their institutional structures to changing individual behaviours. Lucas Amaral, Juliane Reinecke and Michael Etter examine how such issues reveal the ways in which sustainable practices take shape, are deployed, and transform on a daily basis.
Sierra Leone’s harsh new laws to protect women and girls are causing harm in the wrong places
Luisa Schneider
Efforts to progress on gender equality in Sierra Leone have led to the passage of laws designed to protect women and children from gendered violence. Luisa T. Schneider argues that these reforms can actual harm young people and fail to reflect the social realities of marginalised communities.
Call for Papers: ‘Markets as Infrastructures’ edited by Claudia Eggart and Hasan H. Karrar
This special issue approaches markets as infrastructures in order to examine how abstraction and materiality are not opposites but rather mutually sustained through social, technical, and political labour. The editors are particularly interested in contributions that connect long-term, in-depth, or participatory insights on market forms and practices to theoretical approaches in critical political economy, decolonial studies, and world system theory.
New publication: ‘Non-Hegemony’ by Ilias Alami, Tom Chodor, Jack Taggart
Multilateralism continues to be challenged and dismantled as leading states take unilateral actions while ignoring traditional institutions and forums. This article traces the shift away from multilateralism to the crisis of the neoliberal order. In doing so, it explores the emergence of a non-hegemonic world and the strategies that states employ to pursue their interests within it.
New publication: ‘Protein’ by Samantha King and Gavin Weedon
Protein has often been touted as the answer to a range of issues, from malnutrition to building muscle and exercise recovery. Its recognition as a star nutrient is not based on people’s dietary needs. Rather, it is shaped by political, social and ecological forces which influence how we understand food, health and our diets. Samantha King and Gavin Weedon unravel the myths surrounding protein and examine its enduring relevance in the cultural imagination.
New publication: ‘Humanitarian frontiering: Competition, markets, and governance in refugee cash assistance programs’ by Lauren L. Martin and Hanna A. Ruszczyk
Distributing humanitarian aid through cash assistance programmes created two frontiers: a race to build digital infrastructure and crisis-specific negotiations between international NGOs, governments, banks, financial service providers and at times, displaced communities. Through the concept of humanitarian frontiering, this article examines how these market-driven interventions continually connect humanitarian and other economic regimes and encourage the accumulation of expertise and resources.
12th Flexible Grants for Small Groups Competition (FG12)
Live now: deadline 5pm GMT, Friday 13th March 2026
Funding support for small groups (2-10 scholars) to complete a piece of research or undertake face-to-face joint group work.