Community Knowledge Alliance
The WGSI Community Knowledge Alliance (CKA) is an initiative aimed at strengthening the intellectual and practical ties between communities of feminist scholars and feminist practitioners. CKA seeks proposals that are meant to galvanize, encourage, and facilitate discussions across different organizational sites (non-profit settings; workplaces, grassroots social movements; municipal, provincial, national, international, and transnational government settings; and universities, including organizations and cultural organizations engaged in musical, literary, visual or performance media).
Previous funded projects include:
Dr. Wafaa Hasan – “From Erasure to Refusal: Palestine and the Struggle against Colonial Feminism”
Dr. Shahrzad Mojab – “Archiving and Curating Defiance”
This archive intends to create an aesthetically inspired resource for transnational feminist revolutionary pedagogy. Selected visual materials representing Woman, Life, Freedom are curated in this archive. View the project here
Dr. Caroline Shenaz Hossein – “Worlding Feminist Political Economies”
SEEDS Series September – December 2022. View the project here
2022-2023 Worlding Feminist Solidarity Economies Lecture Series. View the project here
Rupaleem Bhuyan and Mandeep Kaur Mucina – “Arts-Based Steering Committee for the Border(ing) Practices Project”
Border(ing) Practices: Systemic Racism, Immigration & Child Welfare is a collaborative research project led by researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of Victoria working in partnership with child welfare, immigration, and gender-based violence service providers and advocates within Ontario and British Columbia. View the project here
Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis, Bonnie McElhinny and Audrey Huntley – “Decolonizing Justice in the Context of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, and Two Spirit People: A Roundtable”
This roundtable organized by the Tkaronto/Toronto-based network No More Silence (NMS) brings together scholars, activists, and legal professionals from what is now called Canada to discuss the challenge of decolonizing justice around the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, trans and two spirit people (MMIWGT2S). Watch the roundtable here
Jesook Song – “Women Writers of Decolonial Worldmaking in the Twentieth Century”
2026-2027 Community Knowledge Alliance – Call for Proposals
Application deadline: Thursday, November 19, 2026, 11:59 pm
The WGSI Community Knowledge Alliance (CKA) is an initiative aimed at strengthening the intellectual and practical ties between communities of feminist scholars and feminist practitioners. The CKA fund is meant to galvanize, encourage, and facilitate discussions across WGSI and other sites of intellectual inquiry and knowledge production such as non-profit settings, workplaces, grassroots social movements, municipal, provincial, national, international, and transnational government settings, universities, and sites and forms of cultural production including musical, literary, visual, or performance.
Applications will be assessed by the CKA committee, which is composed of WGSI faculty members and a graduate student. We are interested in supporting as many projects as feasible, and welcome proposals requiring modest support as well as those that may require more robust funding. Applicants who have not received CKA funding in the past two years will be prioritized in the adjudication process.
Applications must have at least one member of a community group (which includes graduates of WGSI) and at least one WGSI faculty member who may be appointed faculty or affiliate faculty.
Project proposals of up to two single-spaced pages should include:
(1) A title, description, and rationale for the project. Include a discussion of the genealogies, history, and futurities of your project—i.e., how might relationships be maintained between WGSI and the communities involved in the project? Your discussion could include maintenance of a website chronicling the outcomes and futures of the project once the CKA funding is expended; future iterations in later years with the CKA award serving as seed funding, etc.
(2) The timeline for the project and completion date in 2026-27.
(3) A description of the roles of the WGSI faculty member(s) and the community group member(s) in the project.
(4) Discussion of student involvement, if any.
(5) Budget with the total request not exceeding $5,000 (not counted in the 2-page limit). If you have other funding sources for this project, please indicate the amounts and line items covered.
(6) List of applicants with bios of up to 50 words per participant and their e-mail addresses (not counted in the 2-page limit).
The name of the person submitting the application and the project title should be included in the file name—for example, Last name_First name_ProjectTitle_CKA proposal.pdf.
Please e-mail proposals as a single PDF with LAST NAME CKA application 2026-27 in the e-mail subject with a cc: to all co-applicants to the WGSI Administrative Assistant at wgsi.admin@utoronto.ca by Thurs., November 19, 2026, 11:59 pm.
Please direct any questions to wgsi.admin@utoronto.ca.
Notes
(1) For public events, WGSI may be able to provide in kind or discounted space depending on availability. If you are interested in potentially using space at WGSI including William Doo Auditorium, please indicate that in your proposal.
(2) Primary responsibility for organizing and staffing the event rests with the awardees.
(3) Applicants who request funding for visual, sound, or media artists should provide equitable rates reflecting the skills required and their labour. One resource is the Canadian League of Composers’ recommended fee schedule: https://www.composition.org/resources/commissioning-rates/
(4) We are unable to provide feedback about proposals that do not receive funding.
(5) If you receive CKA funding, a project report is due to WGSI by September 30, 2027.