IAfS is pleased to announce the arrival of Visiting Scholar, Dr. Miriam Anderson. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University in Toronto.
Dr. Anderson is located in Office 501R at the Elliott School and can be reached at miriam_anderson@gwu.edu. IAfS student and faculty affiliates are encouraged to stop by her office and discuss her research and expertise before her departure on Nov. 30! See below for details of her upcoming presentation.
She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is the author of Windows of Opportunity: How Women Seize Peace Negotiations for Political Change (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor (with David Malet, GWU) of Transnational Actors in War and Peace: Militants, Activists, and Corporations in World Politics (Georgetown University Press, 2017). Her work has been published in a number of journals including Politics and Gender, Refugee Studies, and Commonwealth and Comparative Politics. Her current research focuses on the role of women in formal politics in post-conflict states, with a particular emphasis on Burundi.
From 1999-2002, Dr. Anderson served as a human rights monitor for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Croatia. During this period she also monitored elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Croatia for the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and earlier volunteered with grassroots organizations in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Save the Date! On Monday, November 27 from 1:00pm – 2:30pm in the Suite 501 Conference Room, Dr. Anderson will give a presentation on her research “From the Margins to the Mainstream: Burundian Women’s Launch into Formal Politics from the Arusha Peace Talks (2000-2005)”.
*Lunch will be provided.
This presentation will explore the relationship between women’s participation in peace processes and their subsequent involvement in post-conflict society—in particular, in formal political structures. Social rupture, caused by war and revolution, although primarily deleterious, often propels changes to gender relations. In particular, contemporary peace processes provide fertile ground for transforming women’s roles as international, transnational, and domestic agendas, norms, and actors compete for influence in the post-conflict state.