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The Gender and Sexualities Project confronts a critical issue in the field of sexuality and education: the sparse teaching of sexualities in academic settings of the South and its negative impact on building new generations of scholars and teachers. In three distinct project phases, a team of scholars from Argentina, Chile, China, Mexico and South Africa is working to evaluate and increase the capacity of universities in the South to conduct research, teach and generate scholarship in the field of sexualities and gender. The scholars collaborate through virtual forums and personal meetings to generate cross-cultural and interdisciplinary results. In the initial project phase from 2004-2005, researchers identified challenges in teaching sexualities in academic settings and placed those challenges in the political, cultural and social contexts of universities. The second phase, recently completed in 2007, called upon scholars to assess their countries’ institutional capacity to engage in academic research, teaching and knowledge production in the field of sexualities and gender. This phase generated a consensus that there is a need to continue building legitimacy, peer recognition and academic prestige in the field of sexualities and gender. In response to that consensus, the third project phase will strive to increase the legitimacy, peer recognition and academic prestige of sexualities and gender as a scholarly field. From now until 2009, the project will focus on developing scholars’ skills in the field and identifying strategies to bring sexualities into the mainstream of academic curricula. The research team will also seek to strengthen partnerships among participating universities and build relationships with new institutions, with the goal of consolidating regional and South-to-South perspectives. The project’s conclusions will be published and disseminated internationally. This project exists thank to generous support from the Ford Foundation and under the coordination of Dr. Adriana Ortiz-Ortega from PIEM of the Colegio de Mexico.
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