Every year the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) invites applications for our small Thematic Research Grants. These funds are usually dispersed through two calls for applications per year. This is the first call for applications in the 2020-2021 year. Please pay attention to this webpage in December 2020 for the second 2020/21 grant call deadline information.

The British Institute in Eastern Africa invites applications for funding for research projects that engage with one or more of the following thematic areas:

1. Epidemics, pandemics and epizootics
2. Citizens and science
3. Knowing environments
4. Technologies of politics
5. Urban lives
6. Retelling the past

For further details see: https://www.biea.ac.uk/research/biea-research-themes/.

BIEA research funding is available to support original research within these thematic areas in any discipline in the humanities and social sciences across the region. The BIEA’s thematic grant scheme particularly seeks to help researchers who have limited access to other sources of funds. In doing so, the BIEA seeks to nurture early career researchers and scholars in eastern Africa, and is keen to fund small projects that lay the ground for larger projects.  Such researchers may include postgraduate students in eastern African or the UK, or people who have not followed conventional research careers but whose local knowledge or contacts make them well-fitted to conduct high quality research. We particularly encourage applications from the wider eastern African region, which we define as stretching from Sudan, to Mozambique, and including Madagascar. 

Grants are normally between £500 and £1,000; in exceptional circumstances, up to £1,500 may be awarded. The grant should contribute towards actual research costs and not include institutional overheads, equipment, and applicant’s stipend or publication costs. Priority is given to researchers based in the UK or eastern Africa.

The application form with details of supporting documents required can be downloaded here.

All applications and references must be submitted by email to [email protected] by Friday 4 September 2020. Please note that late applications will not be considered. 

Successful applicants will be notified one month after the closing date.  If you have not heard from us by then, please consider your application not successful this time.

Submissions are sought for a special issue of Punishment & Society, ‘Legacies of Empire’. The special issue will examine the global legacy of empire and colonialism through its effects on the penal regimes and practices of former colonies. Submissions are sought which explore the historical patterns of penal journeys as well as the contemporary legacy   of many of these  phenomena,  including   the   aftermath  of  colonial   policies on Indigenous communities. Contributions are sought from history, sociology, law, and criminology, capturing interdisciplinary work in which the concept of ‘empire’ is broadly conceived, and which contribute to the field of punishment and society (e.g. through literature, theory, empirical material).

For scholars of crime and punishment, greater commitment than ever is necessary to engage with perspectives that critique the times in which we live. The intention of this special issue is to further the democratization of criminological knowledge and to create a space for voices which embrace southern criminological and postcolonial perspectives

Author Information

Abstracts of 500 words should be sent to the guest editors (email below). Submissions are received on a competitive basis and will be reviewed by the guest editors. A selection will be accepted and the full manuscript subject to peer review (deadline for submission of final manuscript TBC with contributors at a later date).

We particularly welcome submissions from scholars based in the Global South. Abstracts should be sent to the guest editors by 15th  August 2020.

For more details/enquiries, please contact the guest editors:

Lizzie Seal (University of Sussex, UK), Bharat Malkani (Cardiff University, UK), Lynsey Black (Maynooth University, Ireland), Florence Seemungal (University of the West Indies Open Campus, Trinidad and Tobago), Roger Ball (University of Sussex, UK)

[email protected] – [email protected] – [email protected] – [email protected] – [email protected]