PhD Research Project: Gendering Resilient Ways of Life: Religious Communities in Multicultural Citi

The aim is to explore how religious communities in multicultural cities build & experience resilience in a gendered manner. The PhD will focus on religious communities in 3 large multicultural cities: Paris, Birmingham & Beirut. The first objective is to uncover the gendered resources that religious communities draw upon to build resilient ways of life in urban environments. The second, using the same cases, is to show how resilience is experienced in gendered terms. Combined it will offer a critique of existing conceptualisation of resilience and policy application.

Resilience has become a central organising metaphor for security politics, which now prioritises efforts to reduce the impact of risks and insecurities upon communities, especially in relation to countering extremism and radicalisation. Following large-scale terrorist plots targeting multicultural cities a core concern has been how cities generate resilience. Resilience is treated as a property or set of ‘best practices’ that can easily be transposed from one area to another without considering local understandings or human security concerns. Such approaches cannot adapt to complex social worlds and ways of life; risk imposing security agendas that are alien; and introduce potentially excessive state control over ways of life.

Religious communities are often the targets of such top-down resilience and security policies. Resilience activities have focused on the presumed absence or weak resilience in these communities. They are viewed as supportive interest groups or as spoilers (UK Resilience Strategy 2011). In both cases religion is seen as a problem ideology that requires moderation or containment. This ignores how religious communities draw on communal and context-dependent resources of belief, belonging and behaviour that cannot be reduced to doctrine, resources or interests.

Framed as the missing link in counter-terrorism, women have also been specifically targeted in resilience policies. In such programmes, it is presumed that women are already resilient, peaceful and willing to moderate the behaviour of their husbands & sons. There is little consideration of the gendered differential impact of broader resilience and counter-terrorism policies on women. This approach to resilience fails to consider women’s experiences of resilience as meaningful.

This overview highlights 3 exclusions in resilience to date. 1: policies and research are largely focused on location and systems rather than place. 2: these priorities have paradoxically meant that resilience when applied to ‘peoples’ is decontextualized and homogenised. 3: resilience research and policy instrumentalizes women’s security and fails to recognise how the processes and experiences of resilience are gendered. This PhD will fill these knowledge gaps, providing both a conceptual & empirical contribution to the field.

Applications are welcome from eligible researchers who have a relevant Bachelors degree (minimum of a 2:1) and have an appropriate Master’s level qualification. Proficiency in French, or the capacity to acquire this before fieldwork commences, is essential. Competency in Arabic or Urdu is desirable. The candidate should be familiar with the fields of urban resilience, radicalisation, and gender. They should have experience of working with feminist research approaches and qualitative research methods. Applicants need to able to communicate effectively and work alongside a diverse range of communities and interest groups, therefore prior fieldwork or NGO work experience is desirable. Applicants should demonstrate high levels of self-motivation and adaptability, and have excellent project management skills.

Funding Notes

This project is fully-funded by the University of Birmingham’s Global Challenges PhD Scholarship which includes full payment of tuition fees of £4,195 annually and an annual maintenance doctoral stipend at £14,553.