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Project dissemination

Project dissemination began with a panel presentation at the Comparative International Education Society Annual Conference held in Washington, DC and online in February 2023.  Its three presentations were hosted by the Gender Justice SIG and are available below.

Barbara Crossouard, Máiréad Dunne and Dauda Moses also presented on the project at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Visual Sociology Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.  We also conducted extended workshops addressing the project’s methodology and findings at Kenyatta University and at Kisii University. 

Further presentations addressing implications for decolonising education, gender and work took place at UKFIET at the University of Oxford in 2023, at BAICE at the Â鶹ӳ»­ and at Savitribai Phule Pune University, India in 2024.

A Â鶹ӳ»­ HEIF award later allowed an exploration of changes in the communities and lives of the participants in northern Nigeria. Some of these were presented at the International Sociology Association Annual Conference in Rabat in 2025.  See selected citations (link to Sub page)

Selected conference keynotes, presentations and workshops

Crossouard, B., & Dunne, M. (2022). Reworking gender, work and education in Sub Saharan Africa. Paper presented at the ReWorking Work: Labour and Livelihoods in the Global South. Philomathia Social Sciences Research Symposium, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, 29-30 June 2022.

Moses, D., Adamu, S., Dunne, M., & Crossouard, B. (2023). Building actions through participatory visual methods: working with women in Northern Nigeria. Symposium presentation at International Visual Sociology Association Annual Meeting, Nairobi, Kenya, 27-29 June 2023.

Dunne, M., Crossouard, B., & Moses, D. (2023). Reconceptualising work, education and gender: narratives of young women’s lives. Invited presentation, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, 5 July 2023.

Moses, D., & Crossouard, B. (2024). Young women in Northern Nigeria navigating education and work: disrupting dominant frames. Paper presented at UKFIET, University of Oxford, 3-6 September.

Dunne, M., & Crossouard, B. (2025). The mundanity of gender violence: young women’s narratives from Northern Nigeria. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of British Association for Comparative and International Education (BAICE), Â鶹ӳ»­, 4-6 September.

Crossouard, B., Dunne, M., Moses, D., & Aliyu, S. (2025). The banality of gender violence: the everyday lives of women in Northern Nigeria. Paper presented at the International Sociology Association, Rabat, Morocco.

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Project publications

The WE-SAY project has generated a number of joint publications addressing different aspects of the research in northern Nigeria, all of which pose challenges to dominant development discourses.

 draws closely on the project data from northern Nigeria to challenge dominant development narratives surrounding schooling, work and motherhood. It argues for attention to difference - not deficit - when considering the complexities of young women’s lives and the difficulties they face in combining education with the unremitting demands of work. It illuminates from the young women’s accounts how schooling, work and the family reproduce gender injustices. The article concludes with a call for more research into the coloniality of gender relations in this and other postcolonial contexts.

illuminates the multiple forms of gender violence to which the young women in northern Nigeria were routinely subject, in the home, at work and in education. It first questions dominant understandings of gender violence, and then through the project data illuminates the mundanity of the enactment of these violences, and how these simply seem ‘normal’. An everyday part of daily life. The analysis further highlights how the reproduction of a patriarchal gender regime was sustained in this context by appeals to religion, through forms of pious masculinity.

addresses the project’s research methodology. In a northern Nigerian context where young women typically have no voice, it describes how the use of participatory visual methods brought young women together through an extended series of workshops which supported them in developing and presenting their agendas for change. The chapter also critically reflects on the potential and limitations of these methods for enabling voice and social changes, remaining particularly vigilant about lapsing into development discourses of empowerment and emancipation.

Crossouard, B., Dunne, M., Moses, D., & Adamu, S. (2025). Deconstructing deficit in development discourses: Young rural women in Northern Nigeria navigating work and education. COMPARE: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1-18. doi:

• Dominant development discourses typically assume a linear transition between schooling, work and motherhood, constructing in deficit those whose lives do not this pathway. This paper offers a counter-narrative to such Eurocentric discourses by drawing on recent qualitative research into how young women in rural contexts of north-east Nigeria navigated the demands of work, family and education. Using participatory visual methods, it engaged two groups of young women (one Christian and one Muslim) in a series of workshops where they reflected on the challenges they faced in their lives. Most also participated in individual life history interviews. The young women’s narratives illuminated the difficulties of navigating the multiple demands of education, work and family in contexts of poverty and patriarchy. We conclude by arguing for attention to difference rather than reading deficit in the livelihood trajectories of young people in the Global South.

Dunne, M., Crossouard, B., Dauda, M., & Aliyu, S. (2026). Mundane violence and gender politics: young women’s narratives from Northern Nigeria. In A. Akpinar & N. Ammar (Eds.), The Emerald Handbook of Family and Social Change in the Global South: A Gendered Perspective: Emerald. Available at: []

• This chapter presents recent empirical research into the ways young women navigate education, family and work in two rural contexts of Adamawa State in Northern Nigeria. The research used participatory visual methods with two groups of young women, one Christian and one Muslim (14 in each context). The aims were to create space for them to voice their concerns about the difficulties they faced in their daily lives and to develop their own agendas for change. Twelve young women from each context also participated in life history interviews. The research illuminated the multiple forms of gender violence to which the young women were subject, in the home, at work and in education. The emphasis in this paper is on the mundanity of this gender violence and its centrality within the family, in particular in the reproduction of a patriarchal gender regime sustained by pious masculinities. Importantly, while some young women questioned this gender regime, our analysis shows how women themselves were often integral to the reproduction of gender violence in their different communities.

Moses, D., Adamu, S., Crossouard, B., & Dunne, M. (2024). Developing participatory visual methods with young rural women in Northern Nigeria. In SAGE Research Methods Cases: Diversifying and Decolonizing Research: SAGE ONLINE. doi: 

• This case study discusses the use of participatory visual methods with two groups of young women (coresearcher participants) in two distinct (Muslim and Christian) communities in rural northern Nigeria. These workshops addressed the challenges the young women faced in combining education with the multiple forms of work demanded of them in their daily lives. We focus primarily on methodological issues related to the use of visual methods while also addressing some of the substantive concerns raised by the co-researcher participants. After a brief depiction of the research project, its context, and the rationale for the research, we trace how these two groups of young women participated in a series of workshops involving visual methods and how this led them to a dialogue with their community leaders about areas for social change that were of serious concern to them. We highlight how the workshop data helped illuminate the situated complexities of the lives of the coresearcher participants, the experiences of learning to use participatory visual methods, and the questions this raised in a context in which such methodologies had not been used before. Finally, from a decolonial perspective, we reflect on the social dynamics within the study to consider the potential and limitations of participatory visual methodologies for enabling voice and social change.

 

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Respondent Commentary from Dr Paul Fean,

The session was a valuable interrogation of gender, education and work with relevance to the work of youth training and employment actors, including INGOs such as Plan International. The research questioned the assumptions of the linear pathway from learning to earning, while also highlighting the realities of young women’s experience at home, education and work.

The detailed learning of the study provides depth of understanding on key elements of Plan International’s :

• Gender norms were emphasised through the whole study, including gendered space in education and the hidden curriculum, gender roles in homes, and the broader impact of social norms on access to work.
• Reflecting on the enabling environment needed by young women to learn and access employment, the study illustrated why an enabling environment should not be assumed and particularly the importance of working with teachers to promote gender equality.
• The participatory approach of the study, in which the young women were co-research participants, centred their agency in the process.

Overall, the research shows the need for practitioners to understand the diverse experiences of young women in all their diversity through detailed gender analysis and participatory approaches to learn how to support young women transition to and stay in gender responsive work.