A new Seminar Series on intersectionality and justice as a beneficial framework and methodology paired with peace studies has been established by The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame.

Led by Ashley Bohrer, Assistant Professor of Gender and Peace Studies, and featuring a variety of guest presenters, the Series addresses the potential of intersectional analysis for peace studies scholars, with an ability to transform timely global conversations and issues.  The series illustrates how peacebuilding in its many forms contributes to the strength and value of intersectionality and justice as an analytical tool and concept.

On 5 December 2024, Professor Marsha Henry was the guest presenter, delivering a Lecture on 'Intersectional Beginnings and Abolitionist Endings: Decolonial, Feminist and Anti-Militarist Theorising on Peacekeeping’, based on her recent book The End of Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024).  The Lecture, drawing on critical concepts from Black feminist thought and postcolonial and critical race theories, provided an intersectional analysis of peacekeeping based on more than 15 years of ethnographic fieldwork around the world--including interviews with UN peacekeepers, humanitarian aid personnel, and local populations. Revealing that peacekeeping is not the benign, apolitical project it is often purported to be, Henry’s work encourages readers to imagine and enact alternative futures to peacekeeping.

Read more and watch the recording of the lecture here.

 

Professor Marsha Henry

Professor Henry is the Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women, Peace, Security and Justice.  Her research is concerned with the gendered and racialised politics of violence; militarisation; global south development; international aid and intervention; and conflict, peace, and security.  She is the author of several books, the latest of which is: The End of Peacekeeping:  Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024).

Marsha has also advised a number of national governments on women’s participation in the armed forces, combatting sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian settings, and developing anti-racist and diversity strategies in foreign policy ministries.