The Feminist Theory and Gender Studies section of ISA invites members to vote for the available positions on the executive committee. We have nominations for section chair, program chair, members-at-large and graduate student representatives. Please read the candidate statements below before voting online here by Friday 21 February 2020. Our heartfelt thanks to all nominees for standing and to all voters for your participation.
(Any questions/problems, please contact the chair of the nominations committee, Catherine Eschle)
Nominees for Section Chair, 2020-2023
Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso (standing jointly with Punam Yadav) is associate professor of Political Science and Dean of the Veronica Adeleke School of Social Sciences at Babcock University in Nigeria. Her research focuses on women in conflict and peace, gender and politics, and the comparative politics of African states. Olajumoke’s most recent publications include Gendering Knowledge in Africa and the African Diaspora: Contesting History and Power (Routledge 2017), Africa’s Big Men: Predatory State-Society Relations in Africa (Routledge, 2018), and articles in African Affairs, Journal of Peace and Development, and others. Olajumoke is co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, co-editor of the new Rowman and Littlefield book series, Africa: Past, Present and Prospects, and lead editor of the forthcoming Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies. She serves on the editorial board of African Affairs, the Journal of International Women’s Studies, and others. Dr Yacob-Haliso was Global South Scholar-in-Residence at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland; American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) postdoctoral fellow at Rhodes University, South Africa; and Visiting Professor at the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. Dr Yacob-Haliso considers service as section chair as a unique opportunity to make a marked contribution to the discipline and to the field by getting to know and encourage the work of younger scholars and to seek productive conversations with established scholarship; and to promote broader participation and inclusion by providing wider opportunities for these. [Nominated by Peace Medie, Yolande Bouka and Elsada Diana Cassells]
Punam Yadav (standing jointly with Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso) is a Senior Research Fellow and the Co-Director of the IRDR Centre for Gender and Disaster at University College London (UCL). She is also Co-Investigator of GRRIPP – a network of networks on Gender and Intersectionality, funded by the UKRI Collective Fund. Prior to UCL, Dr Yadav was Research Fellow in the Centre for Women, Peace and Security and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dr Yadav completed her PhD at the University of Sydney. She started her professional career as a development practitioner in Nepal and worked for over ten years with various international and national NGOs before starting her academic career. She has continued engagements with various organisations working in conflict and humanitarian settings. Dr Yadav is interested in examining the gendered impacts of conflict and disaster. The uniqueness of her research is that she is interested in examining not only the negative impacts of conflict but also their empowering effects. She has a number of publications including her academic monograph Social Transformation in Post-conflict Nepal: A Gender Perspective, published by Routledge in 2016. Dr Yadav will bring interesting insights to the Committee and to FTGS because of her experience as academic and practitioner from the Global South, currently based in one of the top universities in the Global North. This experience will be helpful in bringing some transformative change to the committee. [Nominated by Itziar Mujika Chao, Catherine Eschle and Annika Bergman Rosamond]
Nominees for Program Chair, 2020-2023
Sara C. Motta (standing jointly with Theresa de Langis) is a mestiza sobreviviente whose wounding and healing are deeply entangled in the histories of exile and loss, and survival, resilience and joy of her Colombia Indigenous, Polish Jewish and Celtic lineages. She is a mother, storyteller, poet, activist-political theorist, and popular educator who is Associate Professor in the Politics Discipline at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. She has published widely in academic and activist outlets, including her latest book (2018) Liminal Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation (Rowman and Littlefield) a decolonising feminist non-manifesto. She is currently working on a manuscript (M)other-wise: A Wild Woman Politics. As Program co-Chair of FTGS she would consolidate the work already begun to bridge the borders between community and University, theory and practise and traditions of feminisms by nurturing the participation of decolonial and communitarian popular feminist scholar-activists emergent in the Global South, and in Latin America in particular. [Nominated by Catherine Eschle, Catherine Goetze and Annika Bergman Rosamond]
Theresa de Langis, PhD (2001, Literary Theory and Gender Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago) is immediate past Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Professor of Global Affairs at American University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Her research focuses on women’s human rights in conflict and post-conflict scenarios, and she has worked with the UN (Central Asia and Southeast Asia regions). Based since 2012 in Cambodia, her feminist oral history with women survivors of sexualized violence during the Khmer Rouge regime is now deposited for preservation and public access at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The testimonials served as partial basis for a classical Khmer opera designated as an official reparation of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal for the crime of forced marriage. Published in a variety of international journals, she has been recognized as one of the 150 global honorees to the Gender & Justice Legacy Wall by the Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice at The International Criminal Court. She is currently finishing a two-year term as Member-at-Large on the FTGS Executive Committee and would bring to the role of Program Co-Chair a commitment to opening new critical space in feminist scholarship in supporting inclusion of marginalized and emerging scholars. [Nominated by Catherine Eschle, Catherine Goetze and Annika Bergman Rosamond]
Nominees for Member-at-Large, 2020-2022
(Note there are a total of 13 nominees for 3 posts: please take the time to read all 13 personal statements)
Amya Agarwal completed her PhD, titled ‘Gender Dimension of Conflict: Exploring Women’s Agency Amid the Politics of Masculinities in Kashmir’, in 2017 from the University of Delhi. Currently, she is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research in Duisburg, Germany. As part of her research project, she explores alternative imaginaries of cooperation in conflict through a study of gender in resistance movements. When she first became a member of the Feminist Theory and Gender Section, she instantly felt at home amid a rather crowded ISA gathering. FTGS is a close-knit community that is founded on shared values and diverse experiences of members from around the world. She has always looked up to the brilliant work successfully carried out by this section to bring a change in the way IR is understood. With a passion for research on gender – both on the field and in everyday lived realities, and, with a dedication to constantly question the power imbalances resulting from the construction of gender identities – she hopes to not only fulfill her responsibilities as an elected representative, but also contribute to make the FTGS space as inclusive as possible. If elected, it will indeed be a matter of great honour for Dr Agarwal to serve colleagues and friends of the FTGS community. [Nominated by Itziar Mujika Chao, Catherine Eschle and Annika Bergman Rosamond]
Masaya Llavaneras Blanco is a feminist political economist and migration scholar. She was born in Venezuela and pursued her education at Trent University (Canada), Central University of Venezuela (Venezuela) and most recently at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier (Canada) where she conducted her doctoral studies in Global Governance. She recently defended her dissertation, which was accepted without revisions and nominated for Wilfrid Laurier University’s Gold Medal. Masaya’s research focuses on the ways social reproduction and human mobilities interact with world politics. Her doctoral research centred the everyday experiences of women of Haitian ancestry who worked as domestic workers in the Dominican Republic in a context of precarity of labour and status. Masaya has worked in policy-making and is active in advocacy circles. She has been an advocate and associate researcher with Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), the Association of Household Workers (ATH in the Dominican Republic) and the Observatory of Migration and Development in the Caribbean (OBMICA, in the Dominican Republic). She is a research associate at the International Migration Research Centre (IMRC) at Wilfrid Laurier University. [Nominated by Maria Tanyag, Rianne Mahon and Kym Rygiel]
Maria-Adriana Deiana is a Lecturer in International Relations at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Her research deploys feminist and other critical perspectives to examine the interrelated issues of war, peace, security. She has authored papers on gender politics, citizenship and feminist activism in contexts shaped by conflict/international intervention, as well as on “everyday” wartime experiences as embodied, affective and mediated through aesthetic narratives. She has conducted research on the post- Yugoslav space, the politics of Northern Ireland, EU border politics and security. Her monograph titled Gender and Citizenship: Promises of Peace in Post-Dayton Bosnia & Herzegovina, was published by Palgrave in 2018. Maria-Adriana is the co-director, (with Jamie J. Hagen) of the Centre for Gender in Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. [Nominated by Itziar Mujika Chao, Shine Choi and Jamie J. Hagen]
Mandi Donahoe is an assistant professor in the department of history and political science at Centenary College, in Shreveport, LA. She received her PhD from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, USA, in 2013. She is the author of Peacebuilding through Women’s Community Development: Wee Women’s Work in Northern Ireland (2017, Palgrave Macmillan) and the co-editor of Teaching Peace and War: Pedagogy and Curricula (with Annick T.R. Wibben, 2019, Routledge). Her other work has appeared in Peace Review and Peacebuilding. She has been a member of the International Studies Association since 2013 and the Feminist Peace Research Network since 2016. Within ISA, she has been an active member of FTGS and recently served on the Executive Committee of the Peace Studies Section. [Nominated by Christina Fattore, Catia Cecilia Confortini and Annick Wibben]
Charlotte Isaksson was Gender Advisor to SACEUR and the functional manager for the integration of gender perspective within Allied Command Operations, NATO at SHAPE in Belgium 2011-2016. She served earlier as GENAD within the Directorate of Operations at the Swedish Armed Forces Headquarters as well as prior positions with the Swedish Ministry of Defense. Her work has focused on Gender Equality and Integration of Gender Perspectives – including UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and related resolutions on Conflict related Sexual Violence. Ms Isaksson has also served as GENAD in different international missions and HQs both in Africa, Asia and Europe. As an institutional entrepreneur she has worked to established structures for mainstreaming gender in security organisations e.g. the function of a military gender advisor as well as the Nordic Centre for Gender in Military Operations. She is currently working within the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Brussels as a senior expert to the Principal Advisor on Gender Equality, Women’s Empowerment and WPS. She has a military background and, besides her higher military education, she is currently pursuing her PhD in International Relations (University of Kent). [Nominated by Roberta Guerrina, Annick Wibben and Toni Haastrup]
Saba Joshi was born and raised in India, and received her training in history, political science and international relations at St. Stephen’s College (University of Delhi), Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) and the Graduate Institute, Geneva (Switzerland). Her doctoral research explored the politics of gender and resistance to large-scale land acquisitions in contemporary Cambodia and was elaborated in the context of a multi-disciplinary research project involving scholars based in Switzerland, Ghana and Cambodia, financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and Swiss Development Corporation. Outside academe, Saba has worked at the International Labour Organization (Geneva, Switzerland) and the Self-Employed Women’s Association—SEWA (Ahmedabad, India). In spring 2020, after defending her PhD, Saba is slated to commence a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation at the University of Oxford, UK. [Nominated by Maria Tanyag, Elisabeth Pruegl and Mira Frey]
Luna K.C. completed her PhD in International Development Studies from Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands, in January 2019. The title of her PhD thesis is: “Conflict, Disaster and Changing Gender Roles in Nepal: Women’s Everyday Experiences”. She was awarded a Nuffic fellowship (2013-2018) to pursue her PhD. Her research covers a wide range of topics in the field of Feminist International Relations, Gender Studies, Intersectionality, Gender and Armed Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Political Movements, Feminist Methodology, and Peacebuilding. She has worked in Nepal for more than 8 years with different local and international organizations on these issues. Her work is published in peer-reviewed journals, including: International Feminist Journal of Politics, Conflict, Security & Development, and Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs. Currently, she works as a Researcher at Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women-Women Transforming Cities, British Columbia, Canada. [Nominated by Maria Tanyag, Annick Wibben and Punam Yadav]
Anwar Mhjaine is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stonehill College. Her current research is at the intersection of gender, religion, and Middle Eastern politics. Her research, teaching, and service seek to challenge misperceptions and misrepresentation of historically marginalized groups. Her research sheds light on the political agency of Islamist women in the Middle East and creates a typology of the structures that shape that agency. Her comprehensive focus on Islamist women’s activities expands the visibility of Islamist women in the Middle East and Northern Africa as political actors. Her research is also respectful and reflexive as it takes her positionality and those of her research subjects into account. As an FTGS Member-at- Large, she will utilize her research, and personal experience as a first-generation, minority, and immigrant woman to highlight the importance of gender and intersectionality in the study of international relations. She will also utilize her experience working with ISA’s Women’s Caucus since 2016 in her capacity as a graduate student representative and later as a Member-at-Large to sponsor panels and organize events to help promote marginalized voices and scholarship in the discipline. [Nominated by Khushi Singh Rathore, Laura Jenkins and Itziar Mujika Chao]
Iratxe Perea Ozerin is currently a Lecturer of International Relations at the Department of International Public Law, International Relations and History of Law at the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain. She teaches International Relations in Basque and Spanish in several degrees, including Political Science, Sociology and Communication studies; International Politics in the Present Day in Political Science; and International Political Economy in the Master’s degree in International Studies. She completed her PhD in International Relations at the University of the Basque Country in 2014, at present forming part of the research group of the Basque university system “Basque Country, Europe and America: Atlantic Links and Relations”. Her research interests focus on: revolutions, transnational feminist movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Antiglobalization Movement, anti-austerity feminisms in Europe, and gendered violence under austerity. She has published book chapters and articles on these issues in journals such as Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internationals and Foro Internacional, and presented her work in several conferences; in particular, she has participated regularly in the European ISA’s (EISA) conference, as well as chairing a five-panel section in Barcelona (2017). She would really like to get more involved with the FTGS section of the ISA as a member-at-large. [Nominated by Itziar Mujika Chao, Catherine Eschle and Tina Vaittinen]
Khushi Singh Rathore is a PhD student of International Politics in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India. Her thesis is a biographical study of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the first female diplomat of India. Through her work, Khushi is questioning the invisibility of women as practitioners of international politics from the disciplinary history, particularly of the women of the Global South. Her areas of research interest are, women in foreign policy, gender and diplomacy, Indian foreign policy, 20th century transnational feminist networks, women in the United Nations, and women’s intellectual history, to name a few. Having served as a graduate student representative on the FTGS Executive Committee for 2019-2020, she looks forward to using her experience to further contribute towards making the FTGS a more representative and inclusive space. Having gained an understanding of the workings of the Committee and the processes involved therein, she intends to take the conversation from last year further ahead, helping the committee in bringing on board voices beyond the American and European academic networks. Her focus continues to be on highlighting the geographical and economic imbalances in the academic space that render it inaccessible for many and the need to work towards a course correction. [Nominated by Catherine Eschle, Itziar Mujika Chao and Theresa de Langis]
Catriona Standfield is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, USA. Her scholarship takes a feminist, interdisciplinary approach to studying gender in global governance. Her first article, on gender and UN mediation narratives, is forthcoming from International Feminist Journal of Politics. She also writes on gender in diplomatic practices. As a Member-At-Large, she would advocate for two things. First, she would like to build on the progress FTGS is making in ensuring panels are more inclusive of and accessible to scholars in the Global South, given the costs of travel and restrictive visa regimes in the Global North. Second, she would advocate within ISA for the development of small research grants for contingent and adjunct researchers working on scholarship relevant to FTGS, who are often ineligible for funding from the institutions where they work. She has experience that would make her an effective representative. At Syracuse University, she advocated for hiring more female faculty. She also helped create a feminist writing group for graduate students. She also represented UN Women Australia at the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women. Thank you for your consideration. [Nominated by Catriona Standfield, Francine D’Amico and Annick Wibben]
Nicole Wegner is a postdoctoral research fellow in Gender and War and a member of the Centre for International Security Studies (CISS) at the University of Sydney, Australia. She has published research on cultural practices that sustain militarism and theoretical interventions that are feminist and antiwar. Her research broadly examines peacetime activities that reproduce war’s assumed necessity and the social and political forces that condone these activities. Her work has been published in Critical Military Studies, International Journal of Feminist Politics, and International Journal. Nicole previously served as the ISA-Canada section chair at the Canadian Political Science Association’s (CPSA) national convention (2018) and served on the steering committee of the CPSA Women’s Caucus. She hopes to use her prior service experience to support the FTGS committee as a member-at-large and is particularly interested in shaping how the FTGS can support emerging and early career scholars in a precarious global academic environment. [Nominated by Megan Mackenzie, Thomas Gregory and Laura Shepherd]
Crystal Whetstone is a PhD candidate (ABD) in the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Political Science, USA, due to graduate in Summer 2020 with a concentration in Feminist Comparative and International Politics. Her comparative research focuses on the role political motherhood plays in Global South women’s peace movements and women’s post-conflict political representation. Her work has been published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP) and The Conversation and she has forthcoming pieces in Third World Quarterly and the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Feminist Studies. She has presented at annual conferences of the International Studies Association, National Women’s Studies Association, American Political Science Association, Western Political Science Association and IFJP. She has won an array of research fellowships, teaching and pedagogical development opportunities, and an award for mentoring girls to assume leadership positions. She has also assisted one of the founders and early leaders of FTGS, Dr. Anne Sisson Runyan, on publication projects and a Cities for CEDAW research project. She would be delighted to represent the FTGS Section as a member-at-large to promote feminist and gender studies scholarship in international and comparative politics research and in ISA activities. [Nominated by Anne Sisson Runyan, Amy Lind and Anwar Mhajne]
Nominees for Graduate Student Representative, 2020-2021
Amanda Álvares Ferreira is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil, and holds a master’s degree in International Relations from the same institution. Her master’s degree research focused on Latin American feminist and decolonial theories as well as feminist thinking on prostitution and sex trafficking. Her current research is focused on theories of sovereignty and resistance within and without the discipline of International Relations, with a specific focus on theories and practices of gender and sexuality that relate to such themes. Other research interests are feminist and queer theory, studies of gender and sexuality, radical political theory, and theory of International Relations. She recently published the article entitled “Queering the Debate: Analyzing Prostitution through Dissident Sexualities in Brazil” at Contexto Internacional. As an FTGS committee member, her focus would be on the importance of intersectional lenses not only to the ongoing work at ISA, but especially by looking at how FTGS can make ISA more inclusive and open to students and researchers that are not in the circuits of the Global North’s knowledge production. [Nominated by Khushi Singh Rathore, Jamie J. Hagen and Itziar Mujika Chao]
Caitlin Biddolph is a PhD Candidate in International Relations at UNSW, Sydney, Australia. Her thesis engages with queer theory in order to deconstruct discourses of gender and sexuality at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Her research aims to explore how gendered and sexualized logics make representations of violence meaningful at the ICTY, and in broader narratives of global politics and international criminal justice. More broadly, her research interests traverse queer, feminist, and poststructural theory within and beyond International Relations. If successfully elected as FTGS Graduate Student Member, Caitlin will encourage greater involvement from graduate researchers keen to contribute vibrant and cutting-edge feminist insights to the Section. She is also interested in fostering greater connections between FTGS scholars at all career stages, to stimulate knowledge exchange and cultures of collaboration. [Nominated by Laura Shepherd, William Clapton and Elizabeth Thurbon]
Zeynep Kilicoglu is a PhD Candidate in International Relations at Florida International University, USA. Before coming to FIU, she completed a bachelor’s degree in International Relations at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey (2014) and a master’s degree in Environmental Politics and Development at London School of Economics and Political Science in London, UK (2015). Miss Kilicoglu specializes in Feminist IR Theory and her research interests are gender politics, migration, and social movements. In her PhD dissertation, she looks at the construction of women refugees by humanitarian organizations in Western Europe and how these actors attach particular meanings to gender equality in their operations. [Nominated by Zeynep Kilicoglu, Susanne Zwingel and Catherine Eschle]
*End of list. Please remember to vote online here by Friday 21 February 2020*
Gendering World Politics 