Briefly Issue 9

Exploring new methodologies in feminism

Two recent IFE student projects focused on emerging trends in women’s rights. As an student intern with the French Coordination for the European Women’s Lobby (CLEF), Chloë chose as her research topic “When “Yes” Is not enough: structural sexual violence in prostitution and pornography”. In her paper she argues that “while sexual violence is increasingly condemned in public discourse, two large-scale industries, prostitution and pornography, continue to normalize sexual acts grounded in economic pressure, gendered domination, and the commodification of women’s bodies.” After a cross-section analysis drawing on feminist theory and legal, psychological, sociological, and economic data, as well as interviews, Chloë concludes that pornography and prostitution are in fact forms of “coerced sexual access maintained not only by individual acts of force, but by economic precarity, gendered hierarchies, racialized migration pathways, and discursive frameworks that naturalize male entitlement to female bodies.” Her work will be of use in supporting coordinating lobbying efforts by CLEF aimed at national and European policymakers.

As a student with IFE, Hokulani chose to join the staff of the “humanist and feminist” NGO Women of the World and Vice-Versa, devoted to getting women's voices in geopolitics and human rights heard and heeded. Becoming familiar with the organization’s holdings and attending events of an international conference on the state of women’s rights held at the National Assembly (legislature) by the French Foreign Ministry, she learned about an international initiative launched by the Swedish government in 2014 to counter the regression of women’s rights worldwide by developing a feminist foreign policy. Initial enthusiasm waned among many participating countries (including Sweden!) in the wake of new conservatism coming to power in the early 2020s, but Hokulani wanted to know more about “what this new area of research means for the future of women’s rights, why it is in danger and what nations like France, one of the leading champions of ‘la diplomatie féministe’, can do to preserve the progress being made”. The resulting study, “Is France's feminist diplomacy a hope for the future or a relic of the past?”, takes an in-depth look at the history of women and feminism in diplomacy followed by a detailed account of France’s commitment to a feminist pillar to its diplomatic program. In conclusion, Hokulani finds that an integrated foreign policy commitment is the most effective approach to moving women’s rights forward – “exactly what the world needs for a more peaceful and fairer future”  – but also the most fragile in the face of domestic opposition of various sorts in various countries. Finally, she finds hope in the fact that while several European countries have withdrawn from the initiative for a feminist diplomacy, several members of the global South have signed on, signaling perhaps a “changing face” for an international movement, which will nonetheless need the continued support and commitment of France as a force on the international stage.

IFE Alum awarded an Eiffel grant to study

The Eiffel Excellence Scholarship Program was established by the French Foreign Ministry in 1999 to bolster the attractiveness of French universities for top-notch international students. Hopeful beneficiaries must first gain acceptance into (and be sponsored by) a French institution of higher learning (université, grande école) in either a Masters or a PhD program. Corinn Tiffany came to IFE as a French and Computer Science major from Brown University, choosing to join the research staff of an informatics laboratory at the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (INRIA), where she worked on developing a program to optimize processor/application links for efficient operations on computers running Linux operating systems. France’s renowned engineering school Ecole Polytechnique is a major research partner to INRIA. Corinn’s progress during her IFE internship spurred the idea of applying to the Masters’ program at Polytechnique; once she was admitted the latter submitted her – ultimately successful – candidacy for an Eiffel scholarship. Highly competitive, the Eiffel program attracts applications from thousands of top students from around the world and grants scholarships (a generous cost of living stipend) to fewer than 10% of them. (Host institutions are expected to waive or reduce tuition fees). Enrolled in the Parallel and Distributed Systems track of the M.S. program in computer science, Corinn is currently completing the internship phase of the program, back at her “old” lab at INRIA!

At IFE it’s “Field Research” Because Linked to Host Organization’s Work : Take a look

If IFE is well known for STEM field placement, in French or Spanish, whereby students take part in recognized scientific research programs, recent reinforcement of the link between internship experience and research for all students, in any field, has been fruitful, as shown by a quick survey of some (very focused) research project titles:

• Relationships Between Topological and Spatial Planning Characteristics of the Strasbourg Road Network and Cyclists’ Perceptions: Results from a large-scale survey

• New Approaches to Audiovisual Content: A case study of Asturias-based production startup

• The ICSID Convention in Colombia: An obstacle to regulation or an economic necessity?

• From Spectator to Participant: How curatorial practices are redefining the museum experience

• “You Gotta Fight for Your Right”: The historical suppression and modern development of women’s football

• Texts to Traits: An assessment of the Big Five personality trait structure in texts generated by large language models

• The European Commission and the Rule of Law: The enforcement capacity of EU rules as shaped by institutional architecture

• From the Crimean War to the War in Ukraine: How has the viewer’s perception of war imagery evolved?

• Between sovereignty and Integration: France, Europe, and the paradox of strategic autonomy

• Theatre in French Prisons: Rehabilitation, personal change, and the limits of the penal system

• Between Sustainable Ambitions and Urban Realities: The development of éco-quartiers in France

• Anti-elitism and Multilateral Withdrawal: Ideological necessity or elective affinity? A comparative study of JD Vance, Viktor Orbán, and Marine Le Pen.

Meanwhile science students at IFE continue to get involved in fascinating projects such as research on “bright photomodulable nanomaterials”; new segmentation methods for remote sensing imagery; the role of actin in DNA repair; software heritage and the preservation of source code; virtual reality for memory training in cases of Alzheimer’s; or real-time processing of adjective placement in French as a second language, to name a few.