Engaging stakeholders and audiences with the roots and routes of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) discourses

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The WHO defines FGM as any injury to or removal of the female genitalia for non-medical reasons (WHO 2018). FGM violates several human rights, including the right to being free from violence and discrimination, the right to health, bodily integrity, and, potentially, to life (UNICEF 2005). In many contexts, FGM precedes early marriage and school dropout (Cloward 2016). Beyond health and psychological implications, the WHO (2020) estimates that the current and future financial cost of health care for circumcised women is 1.4 billion USD. While the anti-FGM campaign has made significant progress in ending FGM in some contexts, in other places, FGM remains nearly as common today as it was 30 years ago (UNICEF 2020, 4).My doctoral thesis demonstrates that the globally dominant anti-FGM discourse - as promoted by the UN and adhered to by most civil society actors - fails to include and reflect the multiple and diverse experiences of FGM- affected communities. This failure is an important reason why anti-FGM interventions do not yield the hoped-for results: people are less likely to support interventions that do not resonate with their experiences. Scholars have meticulously documented the diversity of meanings, reasons, types, and attitudes related to FGM (i.a. Gruenbaum 2001; Nnaemeka 2005; Abusharaf 2006; Abdulcadir et al. 2012; Longman and Bradley 2015), but this knowledge has not adequately translated into changed policy and approaches.My doctoral research used an innovative, multi-sited ethnography to "follow" knowledge ("discourses"), policies, and approaches on their travels between FGM-affected communities, NGOs, UN agencies, governments, and academics. My goal was to understand what is required to ensure that the voices and experiences of people from FGM-affected communities are included in anti-FGM policy, advocacy, and programmes. My research identified the "obstructions" that complicate or impede these alternative voices, experiences, and perspectives from actually influencing and changing the dominant anti-FGM discourse and the approaches that were built on it. Understanding these "obstructions" will allow policy- and programme-makers to make policy and programmes more inclusive and reflective of people's experiences and, thus, more effective in encouraging the abandonment of FGM.The Fellowship will allow me to disseminate my findings to stakeholders concerned with FGM to make anti-FGM efforts more inclusive and effective. To maximise impact, I will expand my network with academic and non-academic actors and make insights available to the general public through blog posts. Furthermore, the Fellowship will allow me to contribute to academic debates by publishing my findings and, in doing so, I will develop my track record. I will conduct urgently-needed follow-up research on a public declaration to abandon FGM made in Loita, Kenya, in 2019. Finally, the Fellowship will help me develop my academic career by participating in career development opportunities and applying for my subsequent research funding.The University of Bristol is the perfect host research organisation for my project. PolicyBristol, the Perivoli Africa Research Centre, and the University's partnership with UNFPA offer unique opportunities for networking, sharing findings, and collaborating on future research. My mentors Saffron Karlsen and Mhairi Gibson bring substantial expertise on FGM to my project through their research and supervision of postgraduate and postdoctoral students. I draw from my interdisciplinary background (sociology, anthropology, gender studies) and chose the interdisciplinary pathway and mentors from different disciplines because I believe human rights issues such as FGM require different disciplinary perspectives. For that reason, I aim to bring together Bristol researchers from different disciplines and faculties working on FGM and related issues to stimulate cross-disciplinary and -faculty collaboration on the topic.