This project brings together academics and activists working on anti-street harassment projects - those designed to combat gender-based harassment in public spaces - in London and Cairo to initiate new research examining the nature and consequences of everyday transnational security practices.

This new project is based on and inspired by our previous research, which examined media representations, government security policies, and the production and practices of anti-street harassment networks. Elisa Wynne-Hughes (Cardiff University) has researched how the Egyptian and Western media represent street harassment in Cairo in ways that legitimise Egyptian security policies targeting poorer Muslim males as sexually threatening, despite the fact that the government has itself long used sexual violence as a political weapon to deter women from public protest. Jutta Weldes and Karen Desborough (University of Bristol) are working on ESRC-funded research examining how non-violent grassroots groups create and sustain networks to combat insecurity; the global anti-street harassment movement is one of their case studies.

The proposed project aims to examine how groups combatting street harassment function transnationally through everyday security practices, when the state either has failed to protect women or actively targets them. It responds in part to requests from anti-street harassment groups in Cairo and London who, in interviews with Wynne-Hughes (HarassMap; Basma/Imprint; Anti-Sexual Harassment) and Desborough (Hollaback! London) in 2013/14, expressed the need for research into the successes and limitations of their everyday security practices. With ISRF funds we would arrange initial meetings to develop this project with these anti-harassment groups.