ISRF Newsletter – June 2025
This month, we're very pleased to announce our new cohort of First Book Fellows. Also in this newsletter: a Director's Note, latest blog posts, and Fellows news.
Contents
Director’s Note
ISRF in the Polycrisis
Christopher Newfield
Alternatives to the polycrisis are being built by the intelligence of small networks of people working together, out of view of the hypernormalized media that forms our simulated public space. The ISRF is one such network, and the London team had a great time talking about what our friends and Fellows have been doing over the last year at the Foundation’s annual advisory board meeting in Amsterdam at the end of May.
We had two sessions led by board members themselves. One was on culture and creative methods; the other was on the current state of heterodox economics. These are both core research areas for the ISRF…
First Book Fellowships Award Announcement
Adam Smith
As part of a scheme to help recent PhD graduates turn their theses into publishable books, the ISRF has announced funding for seven researchers.
Bulletin 32: Crisis and Conjuncture: Climate, Borders, Politics
Lars Cornelissen & Baindu Kallon
In May, the ISRF published issue 32 of the Bulletin. This issue speaks to the links, tensions and affinities between migration and issues of climate and politics. Based on papers presented at the ISRF's 2024 annual conference, contributions aim to recalibrate existing categories of analysis in the face of escalating political, humanitarian, and environmental crises.
Women in Transition: Gender Roles and the Privatization of Energy Production
Margot Verdier
Margot Verdier explores the gendered impacts of the fossil fuel phase-out in Western Macedonia, Greece.
How one woman’s artwork kept alive the memory of an indigenous people whose culture was destroyed by colonialism
Adam Smith
Shanawdithit's drawings provide a firsthand account of the violence endured by the Beothuk at the hands of settlers in the first British colony of Newfoundland.
New publication: Taming Egg Donors: The Egg Donation Reproductive Market in Spain, by Anna Molas
In this important new ethnographic study, Anna Molas discusses the Spanish egg donation market, one of the most prominent fertility markets in the world. She explores how young women are incorporated as egg donors into the global reproductive industry and reveals the fragile processes of selection, monitoring, and control that ensure the supply of human eggs.
New Publication: Bordering social reproduction: Migrant mothers and children making lives in the shadows, by Rachel Rosen and Eve Dickson
This book shows how enforced destitution and debt work alongside detention and deportation as part of a tripartite of exclusionary technologies of the racial state. It advances the novel concept of weathering to comprehend mother's and children's life-making practices under duress – arguing that these are neither acts of heroic resilience nor solely symptomatic of lives rendered disposable, but indications of the fragilities of repressive migration regimes and, on occasion, refusals to accept their terms of existence.
Podcast: Book launch for Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-74, with Sandra Araújo
On the 27th of February, the ISRF hosted a book launch to celebrate the publication of Sandra Araujó’s brilliant new book, Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-74. This podcast is based on that event.
Video: Decolonisation lecture series, part 1: A World Remade by Decolonization?
On the 9th of April, the ISRF hosted the first in a three-part lecture series on decolonisation. The lecture, given by former ISRF Fellow Martin Thomas, developed a global history of post-war decolonisation.
Video: Decolonisation lecture series, part 2: Shanawdithit: A Woman at the End of the World
On the 30th of April, the ISRF hosted the second in a three-part lecture series on colonial history and decolonisation. The lecture, given by ISRF Fellow Julia Laite, narrated the history of Shanawdithit’s fascinating and important life, alongside the history of the island of Newfoundland, which was England’s first transatlantic colony.
Video: Decolonisation lecture series, part 3: Oil, Decolonisation, and the Future of the Climate Emergency
On the 15th of May, the ISRF hosted the third in a three-part lecture series on colonial history and decolonisation. The lecture, given by ISRF Fellow Adam Hanieh, explored oil’s influence on national independence struggles, from the 1955 Bandung Conference to the rise of OPEC and the nationalisation of crude reserves.
11th Independent Scholar Fellow Competition (ISF11)
Launching late summer 2025
Independent scholars not employed at a university or research institution can apply for a one-year fellowship to complete a significant piece of new research.
12th Flexible Grants for Small Groups Competition (FG12)
Launching winter 2025
Funding support for small groups (2-10 scholars) to complete a piece of research or undertake face-to-face joint group work.
11th Flexible Grants for Small Groups Competition (FG11)
Application window closed on 10th January 2025
Funding support for small groups (2-10 scholars) to complete a piece of research or undertake face-to-face joint group work.
8th Early Career Fellowship competition (ECF8)
Application window closed on 14th February 2025
Individual scholars and pairs are eligible to apply for a one-year fellowship to complete a significant piece of new research.