New research initiative on gender and post-war transitions

The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens jubileumsfond) has approved a research grant to establish a new research network focusing on gender and post-war transitions (GenPow). The new network is led by Varieties of Peace team members Jenny Hedström, Örebro University, and Elisabeth Olivius, Umeå University.

The end of war sets in motion wide-ranging and significant processes of societal change. All of these transformations are shaped by existing gendered relations of power, and generates gendered effects. GenPow will bring together scholars researching gender and post-war transitions in a variety of empirical cases, and advance a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary, feminist research agenda that can generate new insights into the interrelated and often contradictory processes of political, economic and social transformations that follow the end of war.

The first GenPow workshop will be held at Örebro University in November 2020. This particular workshop has a specific focus on the case of Myanmar, and will lead up to the publication of an edited book with NIAS Press’ Gendering Asia series in 2021. Myanmar is both an illustrative and timely empirical case for advancing the GenPow research agenda, and contributing new theoretical insights with wider significance for the ongoing expansion of GenPow and for future comparative studies.

Needless to say, the GenPow research agenda fits nicely within the broader Varieties of Peace umbrella, and fruitful synergies between these research networks are expected in the coming years.