Application Deadline: 10 April 2025
The Safeguarding Knowledge Production Project (SKPP) at the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) invites scholars, researchers, students, practitioners, and public intellectuals to produce short reflective essays for the Chronicles of Silence and Silencing: Personal Reflections publication. The reflection pieces are characterized as brief, informal, and sincere accounts in which researchers reflect on their experiences of being silenced and censored during their research. SKPP is an ACSS pilot project to diagnose the diverse contexts of knowledge production within the Arab region. It aims to uncover critical and often concealed factors and instances of academic silencing in the region, while also identifying effective practices and strategies for protecting academic freedom and research.
Knowledge production in the Arab region is significantly influenced by authoritarianism, conflict, and political instability, which heavily jeopardize academic freedom. Furthermore, the shrinking public sphere and restricted access to archives and state documents, in addition to social and cultural constraints, limit research capabilities. Globally, the conditions of academic freedom are in rapid exponential decline, and academics are increasingly subjected to threats. ACSS strives to develop research infrastructures and safe spaces to document and report on the different modalities of silencing academic research and has been instituting projects and institutional strategies to implement internal safeguarding measures. In line with the above, ACSS seeks to better understand the landscape of academic freedom in the Arab region and its diaspora by collecting raw stories about silencing research and safeguarding knowledge.
Of special interest are personal reflections on silencing, censorship, and self-censorship and how they impact your lives, research, and criticality in the Academy. We are looking to collect experiences that are written in a creative and non-academic voice, which detail first-hand experiences around academic freedom in the Arab region and diaspora. The hope is that these accounts become part of an intimate, collective archive that can inform future conceptualizations of safe spaces and policies. Out of all the reflection pieces received, ten will be chosen for illustration as comics in the final report. The remaining accounts will be kept in their original, unedited raw form, showcasing real-life stories. Any submissions that do not meet the selection criteria will be disregarded.
A research team will review stories for publication and select which will be illustrated, and the selection procedures will abide by the highest standards of academic and ethical judgment. Only the small research team at ACSS will have access to the submissions to coordinate the publication process and ensure all submissions have been anonymized. All reflection pieces will be published confidentially to safeguard researchers’ privacy, enrich the quality and sincerity of accounts, and improve representativeness and participation. Submissions will be confidential, and privacy will be safeguarded through ACSS’s policies for researchers’ protection. In the same vein, ACSS strongly advises researchers to protect their own identities and the identities of the research participants discussed in the reflection piece. We urge you to avoid using personal identifiers (gender, age, profession, location, etc.) that may help identify the individuals involved.
The final output is envisioned as an illustrated report of personal stories about silencing research and researchers in the Arab region and diaspora. Storytelling through comics has emerged as a powerful and dynamic genre to address complex and sensitive sociopolitical issues and engage a wide audience. Combining visual graphics with narratives, comics create a vivid and paced representation of life experiences and, for the sake of this project, provide a nuanced understanding of researchers’ everyday experiences with academic silencing and censorship.
Areas to explore:
We invite short essays or reflection pieces between 800 and 1200 words. We accept submissions in three languages: Arabic, English, and French. Reflection pieces should be written in accessible language for a wide readership in and beyond the social sciences and humanities. Submissions will be reviewed for content and style and will appear in print and digitally with open access on the ACSS website.
Reflection pieces should be submitted to: boustany@theacss.org no later than April 10, 2025.
March: Launch Call for Submissions
April: Submission Deadline and ACSS Internal Selection
May: Design and Illustrations
June: Review and Edit
July: Publish and Disseminate
*SKPP is a two-year pilot project at ACSS funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
