Past Speaker Events

Join the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights for the fourth panel of our Spring 2021 Speaker Series. To join the webinar, Zoom registration is required.

Join the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights and the University of Massachusetts Boston Sustainable Solutions Lab for the second panel of our Spring 2021 Speaker Series. To join the webinar, Zoom registration is required.

Challenges today are global in nature and are best addressed through global responses with diverse voices engaged. However, those most vulnerable, people and particularly women of color, are not adequately represented at the policy tables where decisions are being made. This discussion will examine some of those challenges, particularly infectious disease, and the impact of those challenges on the most vulnerable communities. 

This event is being cosponsored by the UMass Boston CLA Dean's Office; Africana Studies Dept; Anthropology Dept; Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance Dept; Economics Dept; History Dept; Philosophy Dept; Political Science Dept; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Dept and Human Rights Minor; the Honors College; the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences; the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy; the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; and the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies.

Credit: Georgina Smith / CIAT

The failure to include gender in the economic history of rural development has severely limited our understanding of the colonial, privatizing and collectivist economic policies that disrupted and transformed the lives of rural women and men in the modern world. This talk will rewrite a piece of that history, exploring rural development in 20th-century Kenya through the lens of women’s labor and land claims. In the course of the 20th-century, Kikuyu women resisted efforts by husbands, fathers, brothers, tribal authorities and the state to control women-cultivated lands. Were these women seeking private land of their own, or were they advancing claims that didn't fit neatly into preconceived capitalist or pre-capitalist categories?

This event is being cosponsored by the UMass Boston CLA Dean's Office; Anthropology Dept; Economics Dept; History Dept; Political Science Dept; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Dept and Human Rights Minor; the Honors College; the Sociology Club; and the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy.

Dr. Mnisi Weeks will discuss the political economy of rural South Africa, drawing from the ethnographic research she conducted for her book Access to Justice and Human Security: Cultural Contradictions in Rural South Africa. Her research reveals how historical conditions and contemporary pressures grounded in severe neglect and harm by the state have resulted in a toxic mix of gender dynamics, intergenerational tensions, and easy accessibility and reliance on firearms as a means of conflict management that has strained traditional justice mechanisms’ ability to deliver the high normative ideals with which they are notionally linked. This prompts her to question what forms of justice are accessible in insecure contexts and what solutions are viable under such volatile human conditions.

This event is being cosponsored by the UMass Boston CLA Dean's Office; Anthropology Dept; Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance Dept; History Dept; Political Science Dept; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Dept and Human Rights Minor; the Honors College; the Sociology Club; the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences; the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy; and the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development.

Drawing from ethnographic research in Sierra Leone, Ryan considers how the language used to encourage and justify large-scale land deals reflects coloniality in its assertion of what counts as ‘good agriculture’ and desirable ‘development.’ While most attention to the “new global land rush” focuses on explaining its relation to historical trends in using land for capital transformation, and its situatedness in global economic processes, Ryan takes a different approach. She analyzes the ways that investing companies, the World Bank, and target countries frame large-scale land deals as having potential to ‘modernize backwards agricultural practices’ and thereby to make agriculture a means of economic development. In this talk Ryan argues that these framings are situated in wider discourses and practices of coloniality, and understanding the conditions that make these investments possible necessitates critical engagement with how the global land rush is both racialized and dependent on vague references to (under)development.

This event is being cosponsored by the UMass Boston CLA Dean's Office; Department of Africana Studies; Department of Anthropology; Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance; Department of Economics; Department of History; Department of Political Science; the Honors College; the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies; and the Africa Scholars Forum.

In societies impacted by war or civil conflict, women experience violence as a continuum across domestic and societal spheres. However, studies of violence treat micro and macro violence as theoretically distinct. The lecture will illustrate how the separation of violence into micro or macro violence is problematic for understanding gender-based violence in post-crisis contexts. Using examples from field research in Nepal, it is shown that this separation obscures structural forms of exclusion in post-conflict societies. The neglect of post-conflict reconstruction frameworks of the different forms of gender-based violence leads, therefore, to new and persistent forms of discrimination and marginalization.

This event is being cosponsored by the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences; the UMass Boston Global Governance and Human Security PhD Program; and the Honors College.

This event is the UMass Boston Human Rights Minor Spring Keynote Address and is co-hosted by the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. It is cosponsored by the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights; the Graduate Consortium in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality; the Department of Political Science; the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy; the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance; and the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development.

International organizations such as the United Nations have prioritized law reform in the campaign to end gender-based violence. This has resulted in the passage of progressive gender-based violence laws in many states that are recovering from conflict. With Liberia and CÔte d’Ivoire as case studies, this talk analyzes the role of international organizations and local women’s organizations in law enforcement at the domestic level. Drawing on over three hundred interviews conducted in both countries, Medie probes the relationship between international organizations and local women’s nongovernmental organizations and the influence that these two sets of actors have on police enforcement of gender-based violence laws. Medie argues that the engagement of the UN and of women’s organization has differed in both countries leading to variation in police responses at the street-level.

Over the last few years there has been a proliferation of women’s empowerment projects run by transnational consumer products companies, typically in partnership with public development actors. In this talk Elisabeth Prügl will argue that these projects are part of a broader process of neoliberalizing feminism. Under the label of ‘corporate social responsibility’ companies such as Unilever and Levi-Strauss invest in women in their supply and marketing chains, seeking to empower them within a neoliberal rationality of government, and finding benefits for both the women and the companies. Rather than dismissing such efforts as the cooptation of feminism, Prügl will propose that it is necessary to examine, in concrete contexts, the way in which select feminist movement ideas are being integrated into neoliberal rationales and logics, and to ask what is lost in the process and what is perhaps gained.

This talk will focus on the political economy of displacement among Iraqi women refugees in Jordan and the USA since 2003, and the challenges they face as they transition from one country to the other to rebuild their lives. Isis Nusair will analyze the networks of support Iraqi women refugees employ to sustain their agency in this prolonged state of instability and displacement.

The gap between promises of a more gender equal future and realities on the ground during and after conflicts has become a critical concern of feminist security scholars and many policy makers. In this talk, Jane Parpart will argue that gendered experiences and understandings of war, as well as gendered imaginings of peace, both influence the gendered nature of postconflict transformations after anti-colonial and post-Cold War conflicts.

In conflict zones, women's security becomes a highly politicized issue, often in counter-productive ways.  The roles and religious rights of women are highly contested and unsettled issues.  Based on recent fieldwork, this presentation analyses some of these debates within the context of Pakistan and Afghanistan’s security dynamics.  D’Costa will argue that a deliberate focus on the exclusion and limitation of women in Muslim and traditional societies sustains and reinforces the stereotypes of women as silent and silenced actors.  However, while the control of women within and beyond the nexus of patriarchal family-society-state is central to extremist ideologies, women’s vulnerability and insecurity increase in times of conflicts not only from the actions of the religious forces but also from “progressive,” “secular” international “humanitarian” interventions.

The current "Women, Peace and Security" agenda in international policy and activist communities tends to focus on conflict-related sexual violence and women's political representation. In this talk, Cohn will explore the genesis of this severely constricted agenda, and argue that as the 15 year anniversary of UNSCR 1325 approaches, we need to rethink the kinds of research, knowledge and activism required for a truly transformative gender, peace and security praxis.  This talk will frame this year's Consortium focus on gendered political economies of war and peacebuilding.

Singmila Shimrah will report on her current work facilitating the ceasefire agreements and negotiations of Naga armed groups with the governments of India and Myanmar. Her talk will focus on Naga women's grassroots efforts to end six decades of occupation and armed conflict, and will emphasize the importance of carving out space for women's inclusion and leadership in ongoing Naga peace processes. 

Cosponsored by the College of Liberal Arts, the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, and the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development

Protracted conflict over three decades in eastern Congo has profoundly altered livelihoods—-not just the ways in which women and men earn their living, but also the social, community, legal, political, security, and economic environments in which people work. Congolese women cannot avoid putting themselves in dangerous situations if they are to earn money and feed their families, and their work in markets and mining exposes them to violence and sexual exploitation.

Women continue to face significant barriers to full participation in peace processes during and after conflict. Although the post-conflict moment creates a window of opportunity for redressing structural economic inequalities, the opportunity is often squandered.  Only a multi-sectoral approach that closely links women's economic empowerment to political and social empowerment can translate national and international policy frameworks into real change for women in conflict and post-conflict societies.

Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, one of Argentina’s most renowned human rights organizations, exposed the systematic abduction of children and falsification of their identities as a tactic of the “Dirty War.” Since the restoration of democracy in Argentina, the Grandmothers have continued to press to bring human rights abusers to justice. Their search has located scores of their missing grandchildren and restored their identities. The Grandmothers’ commitment to identity as a human right has inspired rights organizations throughout Latin America and the world.

Sex slavery is very much in the media these days, often with an emphasis upon the spectacular moment of rescue.  While the moment of liberation is, of course, critical, this talk will explore the ongoing process of living into freedom for survivors of cross-border trafficking.  What political conditions create fertile ground for trafficking?  And what happens when survivors are repatriated to those very source regions-their homes-after having been "rescued"?  What options are available for reintegrating in a way that protects survivors from being re-trafficked or otherwise vulnerable to exploitation?  Reporting upon her work with the international NGO Made By Survivors, Elizabeth Goldberg explores the problems of poverty, political instability, and ongoing gender injustice that inform the current phenomenon of trafficking, while also sharing news from the field of long-term strategies for empowering survivors economically and socially to live fully into free, independent lives.

Reflecting on some of the unintended consequences of the successful campaign to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," Aaron Belkin notes that the strategies he pursued required him to glorify both the military and American foreign policy more broadly, thus adding to the ever-increasing militarization of American culture and politics. He wrote the book Bring Me Men in an effort to have a countervailing effect. In it, he exposes the complex contradictory masculinities required by the American military, their profound effects on American culture, and their links to empire.

When a handful of women first gathered to protest the disappearance of their children at the hands of the Argentine military government, they could not have predicted that their actions would change the global landscape of human rights. Why did the mobilization of mothers and grandmothers spur the formation of a powerful human rights movement in Argentina? Under what conditions will an appeal to motherhood generate a powerful political response?

Drawing on her experiences as a negotiator in the 2005 Aceh peace processes, Shadia Marhaban explores the consequences of excluding women from peace-building efforts and highlights the broad spectrum of benefits of including women’s rights and needs in negotiated settlements. 

Drawing on 25 years of experience working with a host of governmental and nongovernmental human rights organizations, Julie Mertus explores the mistakes and successes in over two decades of human rights advocacy. 

During his term as United Nations Security Council President, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury played a critical role in the adoption of the groundbreaking UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Throughout the years since, he has continued to campaign for the resolution's increased implementation in the United Nations and the global community.  In this talk Ambassador Chowdhury addresses the essential role of women in the international community’s efforts toward building sustainable peace.

The war in Sri Lanka raged for 26 years spanning the regime of four heads of state, before ending in May 2009. The war was fought over the establishment of a separate Tamil State of Ealam in the North-East of the country. Champika Soysa briefly outlines the factors and opportunities that precipitated the war, and then examines the many roles of Sri Lankan women in both the war and in peace-making, including the female cadre of the LTTE, the peace initiatives of the female head of state President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, the women’s movements in the war-torn North and the South, and the impact of war on civilian women across the country. Finally, the challenges of moving from post-war to post-conflict status are addressed.

What role did women have in the uprising in Egypt? In what ways did they organize and participate? Mainstream media coverage gives us little way to know the answers to these questions. Dr. Margot Badran, a scholar and activist focusing on women, gender, and feminisms in Islam and Muslim societies, shares her reflections as an eyewitness to the uprising.

Drawing on her fieldwork with female combatants in Sierra Leone, Megan MacKenzie explores the ways in which post-conflict reconstruction is a highly gendered process defined and imposed largely from the outside of so-called war-torn communities. The phase of transition between war and the so-called post-war period provides a unique opportunity to examine how social order is literally reconstructed through intervening actors, particularly international organizations and NGOs. Looking specifically at the ways in which female soldiers are described, depicted, categorized, and reconstructed by government agencies and international actors reveals a great deal about how Western liberal forms of conjugal order were reconstructed in Sierra Leone.

Theories and policy practices associated with war and international security have, for the most part, been a masculine domain. Women have stereotypically been associated with peace, and Women’s Studies as an academic discipline has tended to stay away from these issues. Ann Tickner offers some explanations as to why this is the case, and suggests some ways in which feminists in the discipline of International Relations have begun to bridge this divide, offering us some new ways to understand war and international security and their gendered practices.

Forced disappearance is one of the most insidious forms of violence as it seeks to obliterate the body and forestalls closure. The lack of an identifiable body of evidence, as it were, not only confounds the investigations of those who seek the “disappeared” and thwarts the assigning of accountability, but also makes “chronic mourners” of those left behind. In this talk, Malathi de Alwis explains how such chronic mourners “reinhabit the world” in the face of continuously deferring loss, and what might be its political outcomes.

Wenona Giles discusses the gendered relations of forced displacement to urban spaces, and assesses the attitude of the international community toward the current plight of refugees worldwide. 

In  recent years, a group of Turkish women who define themselves as “conscientious objectors” have begun to question the conventional identities -- obedient wives, sacrificing mothers, and proud warriors - available to women within the gendered, heterosexualized and militarized conception of Turkish citizenship. Ayşe Gül Altınay looks closely at the ways in which women are positioned within the framework of the myth of the military-nation and then considers the refusal of all three articulations of female citizenship by women conscientious objectors.

Dubravka Zarkov analyzes the ways in which various forms of violence against men (including sexual violence) in contemporary wars increasingly challenge feminist dichotomies of omnipotent violent masculinities and vulnerable femininities. Multiple vulnerabilities of specific groups of men in wars seem to be both ever more visible, and carefully tucked away from public eyes.  This talk uses intersectional analysis to ask what the visibility means, under which conditions does it appear, and what remains in the dark when media lights turn on to some of the male bodies?

With the end of the Liberian Civil War in 2003 and the subsequent election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the presidency of Liberia in 2005, international observers are debating the status of women as fighters, victims, political actors, and civil society actors in Liberia and across Africa. Using a structured conversation format, Serif Turgut and Sharon Abramowitz contrast academic and practical reflections on gender, post-conflict reconstruction, and humanitarian intervention from two foreign observers of gender and security in Liberia's post-conflict reconstruction.

Denise Horn discusses the development of a new international regime in which hegemonic states have used funding for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to manipulate the development of civil society in transitional states. Through an examination of US funding strategies for women's NGOs within a sample of transitional states (Estonia, Moldova, and Thailand), Horn assesses the power of such strategies and the long-term effects they have had on the development of democratic norms within these states and regions.

A woman did that? The general reaction to women's political violence is still one of shock and incomprehension. In this talk, Laura Sjoberg provides an empirical study of women’s violence in global politics, focusing on women’s involvement in genocide and ethnic conflict. She explores the ways that biological, psychological and sexualized gender stereotypes shape political understandings of women’s participation in terrorism and other forms of political violence.  

In the fourth year of the US war in Iraq, it seems crucial to explore again what it is that feminist attentiveness and investigation can bring to a more realistic assessment of war-waging and alleged reconstruction. Cynthia Enloe examines the question of whether the US war in Iraq has any wider implications for feminists thinking about war-waging, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Although new concepts of security and new approaches to peacebuilding have created new opportunities to strengthen women’s security, their translation into policy and practice is not clear. Jennifer Klot’s remarks explore how new international arrangements for peacebuilding interpret and respond to women’s security as a part of their greatly expanded mandates encompassing political, military, development, humanitarian and human rights objectives. She also looks at the “reinvention” of global politics in the form of peacebuilding and post-conflict recovery and assesses the extent to which these tools are shaped by both the political and security dicta of bilateral donors and the multilateral processes through which they are negotiated. 

The UN is mandated to apply gender mainstreaming in its work. In late 2006, the UN Secretary-General released two reports calling for greater synergy on such efforts. One report, "Delivering as One" places mainstreaming in the context of broader UN reforms; the other "Report on Progress of Implementing Resolution 1325" considers the peace and security agenda. In this talk Ramina Johal compares the ways that gender mainstreaming is operationalised in the UN World Food Programme, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, and explores ways to enhance their synergy from the context of refugee and displaced populations.

The protracted conflict in northern Uganda has created profound insecurity, resulted in the widespread loss of agrarian livelihoods, and pushed nearly two million people into internal displacement camps. With the current cessation of hostilities between the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army and the government of Uganda, people are increasingly on the move. This presentation discusses the findings of a newly released field-based study by the Feinstein International Center. The study examines the livelihoods of households in Kitgum district and the adaptation of livelihood strategies in response to insecurity. Discussion includes an analysis of the major threats facing populations in Kitgum and the protective mechanisms employed by individuals, households and communities to mitigate their vulnerability to these threats.

Policymakers and practitioners are often keen to ensure women’s political participation in post-conflict transition processes. In recognition that women are differentially placed within social and political systems, policymakers are more and more adopting specially-designed measures to ensure women’s participation. In the case of Iraq, women’s political participation has been held up as one of the most important symbols of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy. In this talk Nicola Pratt examines and evaluates the different activities and strategies pursued by both internal and external actors to increase women’s political participation in post-Saddam Iraq.

Binaifer Nowrojee examines international justice from the perspective of rape survivors from the Rwandan genocide, and exposes the squandered opportunities that have characterized sexual violence prosecutions over the past decade at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). She argues that the record of the ICTR is dismal, and that full and fair justice for women victims of the Rwandan genocide appears increasingly unlikely. Nowrojee highlights some of the shortcomings in international judicial processes that are structured without regard to providing justice, care, or protection to rape victims. Looking at international justice through the eyes of rape victims points to an urgent need to better ensure, as a priority, that international criminal courts neither overlook sexual violence crimes nor allow a judicial process that marginalizes, dehumanizes or demeans rape victims.

Ruth Jacobson builds on the feminist interrogation of 'security' by examining institutional responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the context of armed conflict and related humanitarian interventions. Her broader analysis draws on her field work in Sub-Saharan Africa and on NGO programmes addressing male sexual conduct in that region.

In this talk Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf focuses on gender-based violence and its mobilization by various actors within the Darfur region.  She identifies and discusses the major forces militating against women's rights in the context of Sudan's political disputes and explores the effects of political violence on women's rights. She also addresses the influence of good governance and democratization as avenues for the promotion of women's rights and sustainable peace. 

On October 18, 2005, Refugees International released a new report, “Must Boys Be Boys? Ending Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping Missions.” The report charges that a culture has evolved within UN peacekeeping missions that breeds a tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse, and argues that the misconduct of peacekeepers compromises the UN’s ability to transform conflict and bring about stable peace. Sarah Martin, the report’s author, discusses the scope of this problem and what can be done to resolve it.

In August 1999, the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly to end 25 years of brutal Indonesian rule and to become an independent nation. For the next two and half years, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) functioned as the de facto government, overseeing reconstruction, governance and the building of institutional capacity. In this climate East Timorese women's groups found UNTAET both an ally and an adversary to their organizing around women's issues. Drawing on frameworks as diverse as feminist international relations, post-conflict studies, and social movement theory, this talk explores the consequences for women's organizing when the UN plays the role of government.

 In 2002, Women Waging Peace launched an ambitious field-based research program with the goal of producing 10-15 stand alone case studies on women's contributions to peace processes and post-conflict reconstruction, drawing on key themes including conflict prevention, peacemaking, and post conflict reconstruction. The cases range from women's roles in peacemaking to their influence on the ICTY, their role in shaping security sector reform in South Africa, contributions to disarmament programs in Sierra Leone, and governance in Rwanda. Sanam Naraghi Anderlini will present an overview of this research project, including its goals, lessons learnt in developing and conducting the research, key findings from the thematic case studies, the advocacy objectives and achievements of the venture, and future steps.  

Felicity Hill, Carol Cohn, and Cynthia Enloe discuss the impact of UNSC Resolution 1325. Recognizing that 1325 breaks new ground by putting women squarely in the center of efforts to end armed conflicts and create sustainable peace, the speakers address questions such as: to what degree is this merely a rhetorical shift? To what degree has it resulted in a transformation of United Nations' policies and practices? What are the barriers to institutional change at the United Nations?