Resisting Erasure: Communities Reclaiming Knowledge Production
A joint initiative of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM).
**This call for proposals is for IPPF Member Associations, collaborative partners and partner community-led organisations**
Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) knowledge production spans a wide range of methodological approaches and perspectives. Yet one set of voices and views that have been missing in discourse are those of practitioners and communities. While SRHM – together with its peer-reviewed open access journal Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) – has made consistent efforts to engage activists, implementers and community-based organisations, the field at large has not embraced the experience of communities as ‘evidence’ (McHugh et al., 2024).
Research approaches that prioritise evidence based on empirical, generalisable data collection by external, ‘distant’ actors threaten to devalue or delegitimise tacit[1] or practice-based knowledge[2], due to a lack of either objectivity or an overt, contextual specificity.
Another challenge to knowledge production is the distribution of resources that privilege those with access to academic institutions, research funding and publishing infrastructure – most of whom are located in the Global North. As a result, knowledge production tends to leave behind communities most impacted by SRHR injustice, while sexual and reproductive health (SRH) providers and practitioners remain the subjects of research, rather than its producers.
To address this form of epistemic injustice, IPPF and SRHM are launching the ‘reclaiming knowledge production’ initiative, which aims to foreground the voices, lived experience and expertise of communities and SRHR providers/practitioners in knowledge production.
This call is to invite IPPF Member Associations, collaborative partners and partner community-led organisations to submit proposals for journal manuscripts based on existing research, programmatic interventions, advocacy and communication campaigns that centre community knowledge and lived experience. Selected teams will receive editorial mentoring to develop their research and practice-based material into publications to be submitted to SRHM, one of the leading peer-reviewed journals in the field of SRHR.
This initiative is part of IPPF’s Fight Back Fund, a direct response to the global rollback of sexual and reproductive rights, the rise of anti-gender movements and the defunding of organisations working with the communities most left behind. At a moment when community knowledge is under threat, its production and publication is, itself, an act of resistance.
We are particularly interested in proposals that document under-explored issues, challenge dominant narratives and demonstrate the power of community-led and practice-based evidence to drive real change. Proposals should document the experiences of historically marginalised and/or criminalised communities, including sex workers, LGBTQI+ people, people who use drugs, people in prisons or other closed settings, migrants and people on the move, and indigenous communities. This list is not exhaustive, as communities whose knowledge most needs to be centred will vary depending on local contexts, and we encourage applicants to define and make the case for the communities their work addresses. Across all proposals, we are looking for work that is grounded in the lived realities of those most excluded from mainstream SRHR research and services.
We are welcoming emailed proposals on any of the five priority topics below for submission to an SRHM article collection. Following assessment of the proposals by the SRHM editors, selected teams will be directly invited to work with mentors to finalise and submit their full manuscripts to the Open Issue of SRHM. Manuscripts that are subsequently accepted after external peer review will be published on a rolling basis in the Open Issue. They will then be collated as a special collection of articles. Full details of proposal requirements and timelines can be found at the end of this call.
1. Under-explored SRHR issues in marginalised communities
Documenting SRHR experiences and needs remain under-investigated in mainstream research. They include, but are not limited to, abortion access for trans men and non-binary communities, cervical cancer among sex workers, SRH in prison and closed settings, menopause care for gender-diverse people, intersex experiences with SRH care, and mental health impacts of displacement and migration. Emerging topics of relevance to SRHR could be considered, including chem sex, tech-facilitated gender-based violence, and digital surveillance of communities such as sex workers and sex education influencers, among others.
2. Structural and systemic barriers to SRHR access for marginalised communities
Community-led evidence on how race, class, caste, criminalisation, disability, migration status or HIV status create systemic exclusions from SRH services, going beyond access barriers to analysing the power structures that produce them, including in humanitarian and displacement contexts.
3. Innovative and equitable partnerships between SRH providers and communities
Documentation of models of collaboration between IPPF member associations and community-led organisations, where communities are genuine co-producers of knowledge, collaborators on SRH advocacy campaigns and in the design and delivery of SRH services and interventions, including in contexts of conflicts, political or funding crisis.
4. Community-led evidence for advocacy, legal reform and policy change
Research and practice-based learning that demonstrates how community-generated evidence has influenced structural change, including legal reform, shifts in health system design or the strengthening of SRHR services in fragile or underfunded environments.
5. Resistance, resilience and response to anti-rights movements
How SRH providers and community-led organisations are documenting, adapting and responding to the SRH rollbacks, including the rise of anti-gender movements, aid cuts, attacks on democratic values and shrinking civic space. Community-generated evidence on what strategies are working, what knowledge is at risk of being lost and how communities are protecting and advancing rights in a shifting political landscape.
Please read SRHM’s Aims & Scope and Information for Authors, including details of the different article types published by the journal, before completing your proposal.
Each proposal must comprise a completed Article Collection Proposal Form. Please download and complete the form, then email it to SRHM’s Managing Editor. Please include the subject line ‘Proposal: reclaiming knowledge production’ in your message. Proposals in other formats or with missing information will not be considered. Please do not send full manuscripts via email.
The deadline for proposals to be received is 2 August 2026. Only proposals submitted by the deadline and in the appropriate format to the above email address will be considered.
The SRHM editors will select the proposals that they would like to take forward for the collection, and those teams will be invited to work with mentors to submit their full manuscript via this platform. Submissions will be required at the start of December 2026. A full waiver of the article-processing charge will be provided for the manuscripts that are selected from the initial proposals – should they be accepted for publication following external peer review.
Selected teams will be notified before the end of August 2026 whether they are being invited to submit their full manuscript to this article collection. Full manuscripts submitted directly to the journal instead of via initial proposal will not be considered for this collection.
All submitted manuscripts will be subject to the applicable steps of SRHM’s standard assessment and peer-review processes, and final decisions will be made by the Editor-in-Chief.
If you have any queries about your proposal or this article collection, please contact the Managing Editor.
References
Julkunen I, Joubert L, Fouché C, et al. Practice research partnerships in social work: Addressing impact and credible evidence. Res Soc Work Pract 2024;34(6):652–663. https://doi.org/10.1177/10497315241229680
Kothari A, Rudman D, Dobbins M, et al. The use of tacit and explicit knowledge in public health: A qualitative study. Implement Sci 2012;7(1):20. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-7-20
McHugh N, Kennedy S, Wright A. Extractive knowledge: Epistemic and practical challenges for higher education community engagement. Metropolitan Universities 2024;35(1). https://doi.org/10.18060/27552
[1] Tacit knowledge is knowledge derived from experience, organisational context and community realities, used in decision making and implementation (Kothari et al., 2012).
[2] Practice‑based knowledge refers to knowledge that is generated through direct experience, action and engagement in real-world contexts, often embedded in skills, judgement and social interactions, and not fully codified in formal or theoretical systems (Julkunen et al., 2024).