As many will know, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography is owned by the Antipode Foundation, a charity registered here in the UK. The Foundation grants an exclusive right to publish the journal to Wiley, and the surplus received is reinvested in the wider critical geography community. As well as Antipode’s Lecture Series and the Institute for the Geographies of Justice, among other things the Foundation makes two kinds of grants. 2018 is the sixth year of the Antipode Foundation’s Scholar-Activist Project and International Workshop Awards.

Scholar-Activist Project Awards are single-year grants of up to £10,000.00 intended to support collaborations between academics and students and non-academic activists (from non-governmental organisations, think tanks, social movements, or community/grassroots organisations, among other places), including programmes of action-orientated and participatory research and publicly-focused forms of geographical investigation. They offer opportunities for scholars to relate to civil society and make mutually beneficial connections.

International Workshop Awards are single-year grants of up to £10,000.00 available to groups of radical/critical geographers staging events (including conferences, workshops, seminar series and summer schools) that involve the exchange of ideas across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries and intra/international borders, and lead to the building of productive, durable relationships. They make capacity-building possible by enabling the development of a community of researchers.

Activists (of all kinds) and students as well as academics are welcome to apply, and applications are welcome from those based outside geography departments; historians, political scientists and many others can apply if their work contributes to radical/critical geographic conversations. Also, the Foundation welcomes proposals from historically under-represented groups, regions, countries and institutions.

Since its establishment in April 2011, the Antipode Foundation has spent almost £500,000.00 on some brilliant workshops and projects (many of which are ongoing, and thus eligible for our new “follow-on” funding scheme; watch this space for more). You can read all about these here and here. This year we were delighted to receive 58 applications for International Workshop Awards and 61 for Scholar-Activist Project Awards. The Foundation’s trustees have worked tirelessly this summer to assess them – an difficult task, for sure, given the quality of proposals – and have decided to commit a further £80,000.00 to support eight exciting initiatives:

International Workshop Awards

“Sovereignty Expanded: Indigenous Geographies of the Contemporary American West”

Ciara Ennis and Bill Anthes (Pitzer College) and Hans Baumann (Artist, Santa Monica)

“Postcolonial Difference, Strategic Solidarities: Geographies of Race, Caste, and Tribe in South Asia”

Jesús F. Cháirez-Garza (University of Leeds), Sapana Doshi (University of Arizona), Mabel Gergan (Florida State University), Sneha Krishnan (University of Oxford), Malini Ranganathan (American University) and Sara Smith (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

“Frontiers of Environmental Justice: Building Transoceanic Solidarity Between the Pacific, the Caribbean and the UK”

Anja Kanngieser (University of Wollongong), Leon Sealey Huggins (University of Warwick), and the Race, Culture and Equality Working Group (Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers)

“Policing Rage in the Urban Age of Crises and Extremes”

Tyler Wall (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) and Parastou Saberi (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Scholar-Activist Project Awards

“Resting Safe: Houseless Community Control of Urban Space”

Erin Goodling (University of Oregon), Melanie Malone (University of Washington, Bothell), Christine Hawn (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) and Ibrahim Mubarak and Lisa Fay (Right 2 Survive)

“Fragile Resistance on the EU Borderzone: The Peaceful Geographies of the Refugee Crisis”

Arshad Isakjee (University of Liverpool), Bruno Alvarez Contreras (No Name Kitchen), Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik (Aston University) and Thom Davies (University of Nottingham)

“How the Roma are fighting back: A diary and guide for resistance against restitutions and forced evictions”

Michele Lancione (University of Sheffield), Erin McElroy (University of California, Santa Cruz), Ioana Florea (University of Göteborg) and Nicoleta Vişan, Veda Popovici and Carolina Vozian (FCDL, Bucharest; http://fcdl.ro)

“Solidarity Los Angeles”

Yvonne Yen Liu and Diana Benitez (Solidarity Research Center), Sally Marquez (Research Justice Collective), Chris Cuellar (Color Coded), Noemi Giszpenc (Data Commons Cooperative) and Ananya Roy (UCLA Luskin)

*         *         *

2018 was the first year the Foundation solicited applications for “follow-on” funding. 24 months on, 2016’s cohort were invited to apply for a single £10,000.00 grant; all Awards should have implications for praxis, and this grant is intended to support the most innovative and creative dissemination, enable outcomes to be further developed so their potential can be fully realised, and build durable legacies. The inaugural “proof of concept” fund went to Megan Ybarra (University of Washington) and Maru Mora Villalpando (Latino Advocacy; http://www.latinoadvocacy.org), who will continue their work with Northwest Detention Center Resistance (https://www.nwdcresistance.org). Their Antipode Foundation Scholar-Activist Project Award enabled the publication in 2017 of A Hunger Strikers Handbook / Un Manuel Del Huelguista in both English and Spanish. The book outlines the history and present condition of resistance to the detention and deportation of immigrants in Washington state. Megan and Maru will continue the project with further research and a documentary to be released in 2019. Like the book, the documentary should stand as a fitting testimony to the ongoing struggle and offer lessons to all those resisting unjust and exploitative regimes.

Congratulations to all the recipients of IWAs and S-APAs (we’ll be hearing more from them as their workshops and projects develop over the next 12 months), and thanks again, and the best of luck, to all our applicants – there really were some excellent proposals!

Andy Kent
Secretary, Antipode Foundation Ltd.
August 2018