Two ISS staff members, Dr Bilge Sahin and Dr Nanneke Winters, have received NWO Open Competition SSH grants. Their projects focus on survivor-centred justice in Kenya and on international truck drivers’ roles in global migration, respectively.
The grants are awarded through the NWO Open Competition Social Sciences and Humanities, a funding scheme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
More about the awarded research proposals:
A Cartography of Justice: Examining Institutional Responses to Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Kenya
dr. Bilge Sahin with dr. Zemzem Shigute
Sexual and gender-based violence in Kenya has reached alarming levels, prompting new state initiatives, yet survivors’ justice needs remain unmet. This research offers the first systematic study of Kenya’s tripartite response framework—Gender Violence Recovery Centres, Policare, and Gender Justice Courts—by mapping their distribution and examining survivors’ engagement across institutions. Adopting a mixed-methods design, it combines structured survey with participatory “community mapping” in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu to illuminate both structural gaps and lived experiences. By foregrounding survivors’ perspectives, the study interrogates whether current mechanisms address justice as survivors define it, contributing to debates on socially transformative, survivor-centred justice.
From human cargo and complicity to care: international truck drivers as accidental intermediaries of global migration inequality
Through an innovative focus on international truck drivers who become unintentional participants in irregular migration through their vehicles and routes, this project addresses two challenges for migration scholarship: How can it enhance our understanding of the fundamental social transformation that ‘people on the move’ evoke and represent? How can it serve as an antidote for disruptive anti-migrant sentiment in society? This project addresses how migrant presence changes communities beyond nation-state security frames, by applying a feminist care perspective to the understudied ‘macho’ transport sector. It identifies encounters between truck drivers and ‘climb-in migrants’, shared grievances, and possibilities for mutual security.
- More information
NWO is the national research council of the Netherlands and supports high-quality, researcher-led research. The NWO Open Competition SSH funds small and large projects (XS, M and L) for individual researchers or research groups, including disciplinary, interdisciplinary and international collaboration.
