Grant enables Cecelia Lynch to expand research on faith-based women’s groups in Central Africa

Cecelia Lynch, UCI professor of political science, has received a grant from the University of Notre Dame to expand her research on faith-based women’s groups and activists in the Central African country of Cameroon. Via interviews and observations, Lynch will seek to better understand the gender relations these Christian, Muslim and traditional women experience in their families, communities, churches and mosques. She’ll also probe their relationships with external groups – faith-based and nongovernmental organizations – and their own personal reflections on these relationships. Lynch is a member of the Africa Working Group on Authority, Community & Identity, part of Notre Dame’s Contending Modernities initiative. The $48,000 study will run through July 2019. It coincides with Lynch’s Henry Luce Foundation-funded blog on connections between religion and humanitarianism in Africa. The new grant will support travel to Cameroon and stipends for a graduate student co-author at the University of Yaoundé as well as for the women’s groups being studied. Lynch plans to communicate findings and developments in several publications and the Critical Investigations Into Humanitarianism in Africa blog, which she co-founded in 2009 and now co-edits with a team of African scholars.