Reflecting on 2025: Carrying fire, clarity, and courage into 2026

As we arrive at the close of 2025, we are taking a collective pause – not because the work has ended, but rest is necessary and political. We are also fully aware that for many of us, particularly in crisis and war zones, the end of the year does not bring rest. Genocide, war, violence and injustices do not take holidays. We sometimes find ourselves in a state of liminality when the world expects celebrations, consumption and feasting at times like this. Yet, even amongst these disorientating moments, we come together to acknowledge the work that we have done and the communities that have held us together in solidarity.

The hustle of everyday life should not be underestimated. We know that caregiving responsibilities often increase at home during family gatherings and school breaks. Institutions often claim that "self-care" is solely the individual's responsibility, but time and again we've learned that unless we practise care collectively, it's impossible to fully disengage from our obligations. This month, the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) team will be taking a proper break together for the first time. We hope this will help us reconnect as a team and with our network partners, returning with renewed energy.

Before we close our laptops, we want to reflect on what this year has meant to us, what we have accomplished, what we have learned, and what we are looking forward to in the coming year.

The FIRN team has been working all year on various fronts. We were busy facilitating the research network process and fulfilling all the deliverables expected of our partners and us. We also travelled quite a lot this year to advocate on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), sometimes alongside our partners and collaborators, and other times working independently. In the many spaces we have occupied, we observed an increased political consciousness around mobility and passport privileges that categorise bodies into those who may travel across borders freely and those who constantly have to fight to prove their worthiness to travel. These hierarchies, alongside other power dynamics, ultimately dictate who can participate in advocacy spaces and produce knowledge, whose voices are heard and whose agendas are prioritised. Recognising that mobility is a form of power, FIRN has attempted, within the limits of our resources and the border regimes, to more intentionally distribute opportunities to travel and participate among team members and partners.

In 2025, we have participated in the following advocacy spaces:

1. RightsCon, February 2025, Taipei, Taiwan
2. Sixty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), March 2025, New York, United States
3. Palestine Digital Activism Forum, May 2025, virtual
4. Gendering AI Conference, August 2025, Nairobi, Kenya
5. Global Gathering, September 2025, Estoril, Portugal
6. Digital Rights Asia-Pacific Assembly, August 2025, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
7. Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica), September 2025, Windhoek, Namibia
8. DataFest Africa, October 2025, Kampala, Uganda
9. Mozilla Festival, November 2025, Barcelona, Spain
10. UNFPA First Africa Symposium on Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence, November 2025, virtual
11. CREA Global Dialogue – Connected Struggles: Rethinking Feminist Engagements with Gender-Based Violence in a Tech-Shaped World, November 2025, Nairobi, Kenya
12. Urgent Action Fund Africa – The Feminist Republik Festival, November 2025, Nairobi, Kenya
13. CREA Reconference, December 2025, Kathmandu, Nepal

Across all these spaces, along with our partners and collaborators, we have done a good job in establishing (a) the importance of a deepened intersectional and contextual analysis of TFGBV and examining how these overlap with various geopolitical tensions, nationalist propaganda and socioeconomic disparities; (b) the need for feminists to rearticulate the whole idea of TFGBV beyond what is known, especially in the context of war and conflict; (c) we have also raised awareness around the militarisation of artificial intelligence and the crisis facing the future world; and (d) we were also very busy working on resource mobilisation and fundraising for the next cycle of FIRN, as we are aware that this cycle of FIRN is coming to an end. We are delighted to see all aspects of our work coming together and gaining momentum.

We have also published two GenderIT editions this year. The first one was published in April, "Research as movement building: A feminist perspective on researching technology-facilitated gender-based violence". The edition focuses on what it means to do research, specifically feminist research, at this critical juncture, while having to go through the unbearable pain of witnessing genocide, conflict and war, gross and persistent human rights violations, criminalisation of sex work and LGBTQIA+ communities, and intensification of anti-gender mobilisation, as well as operating under spectacularly failed international law, solidarity and transnational feminist movements. The edition has also been compiled into FIRN's very own journal, available publicly in PDF format.

Our second and more recent GenderIT edition, "Researching ourselves: A decolonial feminist analysis on tech-facilitated gender-based violence", provides analysis of the critical insights that have emerged from the 10 research projects under the third cycle of FIRN. Our partners have, through the process of locating themselves within the data – recognising their own positions, identities and power – exposed the gaps within the dominant discursive framings of TFGBV and thereby, invite us to shift our thinking from restrictive and institutionally defined responses towards TFGBV. The full reports will be launched early next year. This edition includes:

1. Reading ourselves: Feminist data analysis and relational praxis by Serene Lim and Tigist Shewarega Hussen
2. "Carving out our spaces": Sharing takeaways from our research on the experiences of Black Brazilian women resisting TFGBV by Bárbara Paes and Ester Borges
3. "I am drowning under the weight of hatred": The scope and nature of technology-facilitated gender-based violence in Tajikistan by Gulbakhor Makhkamova Ph.D. and Victoria Fletcher
4. Disinformation, social manipulation and expanded authoritarian digital control in Egypt by Aya El-Husseini
5. Threads of harm and Ethiopian queer resistance to digital violenceby Martha Tadesse and S. A.
6. Gender, power, and digital spaces: Understanding technology-facilitated gender-based violence amongst students of South African higher education institutions by Aretha Asakitikpi and Alex Asakitikpi
7. Feminist digital forensics by Carl and Dany Araújo
8. Between survival and resistance: Digital rights of sex workers in Uruguay by Analía Lavin
9. Witnesses, militants, martyrs: When technology meets borders by Sabiha Allouche and Ghiwa Sayegh
10. A decolonial feminist exploration of Black women and gender non-conforming people's experiences of technology-facilitated gender-based violence by Mikhael Adams, Floretta Boonzaier, Kajal Carr, Lilitha Hole, Aphiwe Mhlangulana and Joel Omuron
11. iHEAR TransNet: Intersectional experiences of TFGBV among the trans, non-binary and gender-diverse communities in India by Eesha Lavalekar, Joshua Mark George, Sharin D'souza and Gazala Parveen.

Working alongside our 10 research partners and other collaborators has been transformative and humbling as we get a glimpse into the messy, complex, resilient and powerful lives of the diverse communities. Through them, we learned that holding on to our fire, our clarity and our courage is not optional but necessary for movement building, more so now than ever. Our partners have shown us what it takes to build movements and raise awareness, and to do justice to the movement through their persistence, groundedness and collaboration with people from their regions. Most importantly, we are reminded that showing up can take many forms: sometimes it is the courage to name the unnameable pain; at other times, it is the ability to reveal a new perspective that catalyses a wider conversation or a new imagination of our alternate futures.

2026 will be an exciting year for FIRN as we will be launching and disseminating all 10 research reports by our partners, collaborating with a global feminist AI network, and we plan to establish a new research cycle for FIRN, while continuing our support to all our partners in the Global South. At the core of this, FIRN is continuing our movement-building and agenda-setting strategies through feminist research methodologies.

We end the year with gratitude for our network and communities and wish everyone softness, connection and joy as we step into the new year together.