Josephine Beoku-Betts: Fulbright Scholars’ Award 2018-2019, University of Sierra Leone

Josephine Beoku-Betts will serve as a Fulbright Scholar for the 2018-2019 academic year at the Institute for Gender Studies and Documentation (INGRADOC) at the University of Sierra Leone. During her term as a Fulbright Scholar, she will provide expertise in strategic planning for program and curriculum development in a new Gender Studies undergraduate degree program. She will also teach courses in the M.Phil. and M.A. degree programs in Gender Studies.  

In addition to teaching and program development, Dr. Beoku-Betts will continue her research on “Women’s Political Activism in Post-War Sierra Leone”. Specifically, she will study the Fifty-Fifty Group, a local women’s NGO that advocates for women’s increased involvement in political leadership, increased awareness about women’s citizenship rights, and provision of support for women running for elected office. Her work examines how this NGO leverages political transformations in the state, for example, the newly elected government of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) 2018, to demand legislation and policies which promote gender equality and women’s rights. She will consider whether changing political opportunities to restructure gender relations in a deeply embedded patriarchal culture will lead organizations such as Fifty-Fifty to refocus their goals and analytical frameworks using feminist standpoints that are openly assertive in their engagement with the state.