The Gender & Sexuality Research Network is pleased to announce the winner of the 2026 Best Paper Prize.
This year’s winning paper is: Kebaïli, Sélima, and Éléonore Lépinard. “Negotiating Submission: Pedagogies of
Coloniality in the Everyday of Veiled Muslim Women in France and Switzerland.” Ethnic
and Racial Studies 48, no. 5 (2025): 1042–1063.
2026 Best Article Prize Committee
Katarzyna Wojnicka
Natalie Welfens
Koen Slootmaeckers
Muireann O’Dwyer
Tunay Altay & Maryna Shetsova
The prize committee was impressed by the article’s original and timely contribution to the study
of gender, race, religion, and power in contemporary Europe. Through a nuanced analysis of the
everyday experiences of veiled Muslim women in France and Switzerland, the authors
demonstrate how colonial histories and racialized hierarchies continue to shape intimate
encounters, social expectations, and forms of governance. The article offers a powerful
conceptualization of the “pedagogies of coloniality” through which Muslim women are routinely
instructed, disciplined, and positioned as subjects in need of transformation.
The committee particularly commends the article for its theoretical sophistication,
methodological rigor, and careful attention to lived experience. By foregrounding the
negotiations, refusals, and strategic accommodations that characterize everyday encounters with
racialized and gendered power, the article moves beyond simplistic narratives of domination and
resistance. In doing so, it makes a significant contribution to feminist, postcolonial, and
intersectional scholarship and advances ongoing debates on secularism, citizenship, and
belonging in Europe
Read the full article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2024.2332761#abstract