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ERG’27 (Ecosophical Researcher’s Grant 2027)
To participate in the World Folklore Congress 2027
(6–10 January 2027)
MANUU & University of Hyderabad, Telangana
The Researcher’s Grant 2027:
Ecosophical Foundation for the Study of Literature and Environment (EFSLE) invites the proposals for the panel to participate in the World Folklore Congress 2027, to be held on 6-10 January 2027 in MANUU (Maulana Azad National Urdu University) & University of Hyderabad, Telangana.
This grant is exclusively available to PhD scholars enrolled in recognized academic institutions across India. It is a fully funded opportunity open to researchers from all academic disciplines.
Researcher’s Grant Application Guidelines:
- Only PhD scholars, enrolled in recognized academic institutions across India, are eligible for this grant.
- PhD scholars from all academic disciplines are eligible to apply.
- Total Six (6) grants are available for this conference.
- EFSLE will provide this fellowship to those whose proposals will be selected.
- One panel will be sponsored by EFSLE consisting of 6 participants.
- Proposals for 15-minute papers and 1.5 hour panels (with 6 presenters). For panels with 6 speakers, each presenter will have 15 minutes followed by a Q&A session, if any.
- Email your abstract (max. 300 words) with five relevant keywords along with a bio-note (max. 50 words).
- Please send your proposal to md@efsle.org
- Please mention ‘World Folklore Congress 2027-Hyderabad’ in the subject line.
- The candidates can select any of the themes mentioned below for their proposal.
- The deadline to send the final proposal is 05th of November 2026.
- Conference Registration fee is 2000/- for Indian participants. The lifetime members of EFSLE, pursuing their PhD, are exempted from any registration fee.
- All the selected recipients are eligible to avail the total expenses of the return train tickets (the selected candidates can book their tickets themselves in the 3-tier AC coaches only in any train of the shortest route. In this case, they will be reimbursed after producing the tickets to be submitted along with the reimbursement form provided by EFSLE during the conference.)
- The grant covers the return train tickets expenses only. However, if any of EFSLE lifetime PhD scholar is selected for the grant, they will be provided the accommodation facility too. Non-member scholars can avail the facility on request paying a minimal amount. Or they can go for their own accommodation arrangements.
- If accommodation is availed, the check-in will be on January 05, 2027 (after 1 PM) and the check-out will be on January 10, 2026 (before 11 AM).
- All the selected grant recipients must present a Valid Identity Card issued by their affiliated institution upon request. Failure to do so will result in the cancellation of their candidature.
- Faculty members who are simultaneously engaged in teaching and pursuing their doctoral research are also eligible to apply for this grant.
Details of the Conference
Theme of the Panel:
Indigenous Epistemologies, Gendered Ecologies and Environmental Justice: Reading Econarratives and Folklores as Acts of Resistance
Concept Note:
Environmental crises are not only ecological or economic problems; they are also crises of knowledge, memory, representation, and justice. Dominant models of development have often treated land, forests, rivers, seeds, animals, and atmospheres as resources to be measured, extracted, and managed. In doing so, they have frequently displaced Indigenous peoples, eroded local ecological knowledge, and intensified gendered inequalities. This conference proposes that a more just environmental future requires taking seriously Indigenous epistemologies- the culturally grounded ways in which communities know, relate to, narrate, and care for the more-than-human world.
Indigenous peoples are often among those most affected by biodiversity loss, climate change, dispossession, and pollution because of their close relationships with, and dependence upon, territories and ecosystems. Yet they are also uniquely positioned to protect biodiversity through traditional knowledge, customary law, sustainable resource-use practices, and collective forms of land and environmental governance. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirms Indigenous peoples’ rights to maintain their spiritual relationships with lands, territories, waters, and resources, as well as their right to conservation and protection of the environment and productive capacity of their territories.
At the same time, environmental knowledge is never gender-neutral. Indigenous women frequently hold specialized knowledge of seeds, food systems, medicinal plants, water, household economies, rituals, and intergenerational ecological memory. The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues notes that Indigenous knowledge has a significant gender dimension and that Indigenous women play a crucial role in generating, conserving, and sustainably using biodiversity and associated knowledge, culture, and technologies. However, women’s knowledge is often rendered invisible in formal science, policy, and development planning. This conference therefore foregrounds gendered econarratives and folklore stories, songs, myths, proverbs, oral histories, rituals, performances, and everyday ecological practices as vital archives of environmental knowledge and sites of resistance.
The theme brings together Indigenous studies, environmental humanities, ecofeminism, postcolonial studies, folklore, literary and cultural studies, anthropology, geography, law, political ecology, and environmental justice scholarship. It asks how Indigenous ways of knowing can challenge extractivist and anthropocentric assumptions; how gender shapes ecological experience, storytelling, and activism and how narratives of land, water, forests, animals, and climate can inform more equitable environmental governance.
By placing these concerns within environmental justice, the conference insists that ecological repair must include social repair. Justice requires more than carbon targets or conservation targets; it requires land back where appropriate, recognition of Indigenous sovereignty, protection of languages and sacred sites, gender-equitable governance, reparations for historical harm, and the meaningful participation of affected communities. UNDRIP’s affirmation of Indigenous peoples’ environmental and territorial rights provides an important ethical and legal foundation for such an agenda.
All the research scholars pursuing their PhDs and enrolled in any of the Indian Universities, Colleges and recognized academic institutions are invited to submit their abstracts. We especially welcome submissions from Indigenous scholars and knowledge-holders, women and gender-diverse participants, early-career researchers, and scholars working in Indigenous languages.
The conference seeks not merely to study Indigenous communities, but to create conditions for respectful exchange, shared authority, and accountable scholarship. Its guiding question is simple yet urgent: How can Indigenous epistemologies, gendered econarratives, and folklore help us imagine environmental justice beyond extraction, patriarchy, and colonial forgetting?
Sub-Themes:
- Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, Folklore Traditions and Relational Ontologies
- Gendered Ecologies: Women, Water, Forests and Land
- Ecofeminism, Intersectionality and Environmental Justice: The Intersection of Caste, Class, Tribe, Gender, Sexuality, Disability, and Region in Shaping Vulnerability to Ecological Degradation
- Folklore, Myth and Ecological Memory as Resistance
- Indigenous Narratives of Climate Change, Loss and Resilience
- Land, Sovereignty and Extractive Capitalism: Indigenous and Local Resistance to Mining, Dams, Deforestation, Plantations, Fossil-fuel Extraction, and Dispossession and Struggles for Land Rights
- Decolonizing Environmental Discourse and Epistemic Sovereignty
- Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Climate Adaptation
- Folklore, Myth, and Environmental Memory
- Econarratives in Oral, Literary, and Performative Traditions
- Food Sovereignty, Seed Narratives, Gendered Agricultural Knowledge and Agroecological Futures
- Language, Translation, and Epistemic Justice
- Language Revitalization, Oral Traditions and the Politics of Ecological Naming
- Decolonial Pedagogies and Just Transitions
- Multispecies Ethics, Animal Folklore and Transcending the Justice for Humans
Key Points to be remembered:
Dates of Conference: 6–10 January 2027 (Friday-Sunday)
Mode: Offline (For EFSLE Panel)
Host: CFSR (Centre for Folklore Studies and Research)
Location: MANUU & University of Hyderabad (UoH), Hyderabad, Telangana
Contacts:
Please direct all inquiries to the following members:
Email: md@efsle.org
Whatsapp: Kumar Paarth, Programme Coordinator, EFSLE – 9953833313
