News

© Dr. S.N. Nyeck

In the first two years, the Cluster of Excellence has succesfully hosted 32 fellows for a certain period of time. But even when the stay at the University of Bayreuth is over the Cluster has a strong interest to follow the academic paths of its former fellows creating a network of outstanding scholars affiliated with the institution. This is a summary of activities post-fellowship Dr. S.N. Nyeck sent for us to publish.

Dr. S.N. Nyeck was a fellow at the Cluster of Excellence from 01.10.2019 - 31.03.2020 and has since returned to the U.S. to work on various projects. She has completed the book manuscript "African(a) Queer Presence: Ethics of Relational Negotiation and Politics" (palgrave-macmillan) scheduled to be released next year 2021. The African Multiple Cluster fellowship she had received allowed her to complete the chapters of this book.

Owing to her research on gender and governance in Africa, Dr. Nyeck has been awarded a five-months Senior Research fellowship to investigate "Beyond Equity: Vulnerability  and Gender in Public Procurement Reform in West Africa" by the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa at the University of Ghana. The Senior fellowship is co-funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany. This research  is the first of its kind in West Africa and significantly contributes to bringing a gendered perspective in one of the most significant areas of public economic reform in the twenty-first century: public procurement.

Additionally, under the mentorship of the renowned feminist legal scholar, Martha Fineman at Emory School of Law, Dr. Nyeck has assembled an international team to further investigate the relationship between vulnerability theory (advanced by Fineman), gender and public procurement in comparative perspectives. She is currently editing Vulnerability, Gender and Public Procurement in Comparative Perspectives with entries from Kenya, Botswana, the UK, Israel, Jordan, the US, South Africa...etc. This edited volume is expected to be released next year and will be the first to apply vulnerability theory at the intersection of government outsourcing and gender analysis in a global perspective.

Finally, on December 10, 2020, Dr. Nyeck gave a public lecture titled "Poetics: Queer Recesses of the Heart and the Spirit of Intimacy within the African(a) Household" as a contribution to the Intersectionality Lecture Series and Diversity Competence organized by Prof. Susan Arndt. The exploration of Audre Lorde's poetry as a spiritual practice of the queered self, it will be argued, blurs the boundaries between religion and politics in order to offer an integral account of gender diversity within the African(a) household.

Dr. Nyeck: "I am thankful for the support that the cluster afforded me during my fellowship in Bayreuth, a period during which I also experienced significant health challenges. Today, I am happy to report that I am in good health now."