Jennifer Welsh

Co-Director

McGill University

Jennifer M. Welsh is the Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University and Director of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies. She was previously Chair in International Relations at the European University Institute and Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she co-founded the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. From 2013-2016, she served as the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, on the Responsibility to Protect. She has published several books and articles on the ethics and politics of armed conflict, the ‘responsibility to protect’, humanitarian action, the UN Security Council, and Canadian foreign policy. Her most recent book, The Return of History: Conflict, Geopolitics and Migration in the 21st Century (2016), was based on her CBC Massey Lectures. Prof. Welsh sits on the Advisory Boards of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt. In 2021, she was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Yolande Bouka 

Co-Director

Queen's University

Dr. Yolande Bouka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University. Her research and teaching focus on gender, violence, decoloniality, race and international relations, and African affairs. The key questions driving her multidisciplinary research agenda is how vulnerable people understand and navigate structural and political violence and how these experiences influence social and political landscapes. Her research has received support from the Fulbright Scholar Program, the American Association of University Women, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.  She is the recipient of the 2021 International Studies Association (ISA) Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section (FTGS) Early Career Community Engagement Award. She currently serves on the advisory board of the Diaspora Program of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). In addition to her academic work and service, she has extensive experience with development and security research agencies.  Between 2014 and 2016 she was a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in the Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division. 

Erin Baines

Co-Director

University of British Columbia

Erin Baines is the Ivan Head South-North Chair (supported by the International Development Research Centre – Canada) and an Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia, located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) people. Her research considers the transformative possibilities of memory and storytelling in the wake of political violence;  and, justice, responsibility and social repair of communities impacted by conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence. She is author of Buried in the heart: Women, complex victimhood and the war in northern Uganda (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Vulnerable bodies: Gender, the UN and the global refugee crisis (Routledge, 2017) and editor of the memoir, I am Evelyn Amony: Reclaiming my life from the Lord's Resistance Army (University of Wisconsin, 2015) by Evelyn Amony. Erin is the Co-Director of Transformative Memory: An International Network and the Women, Peace and Security Research-Network. 

Emma Donnaint

Network Coordinator

Emma Donnaint holds a Master's degree in Public and International Affairs from the University of Montreal. She wrote her analytical report on Afghan women’s rights cooptation by the liberal peacebuilding project and its (re)production of insecurity in Afghanistan. Her research interests lie in women’s agency in contexts of conflicts and their inclusion in UN’s sponsored peacebuilding programs. 

She has worked and volunteered for multiple non-profit organizations, including associations advocating for the rights of refugees, immigrant women’s integration into society, and human rights, both in France and Canada. As a coordinator for the RN-WPS, she hopes to promote inclusion and knowledge exchange within the network and beyond, enhance collaboration with Global South students, scholars, and activists, and keep working on strengthening the links between members, civil society, and the government.

Luna K.C.

Postdoctoral Fellow

Luna KC is a Postdoctoral Researcher-Women, Peace and Security at the Centre for International Peace and Security, Max Bell School of Public Policy. 

Luna completed her Ph.D. in International Development Studies from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Her PhD thesis examined how the Maoist conflict in Nepal produced multiple gendered effects upon women’s everyday lives. She looked at how women ex-combatants experienced shifts in their gender roles and relations during the conflict and asked whether these changes persisted after the war to structurally change the position of women. Further, her thesis critically analyzed disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR), and the peace process from a feminist intersectional lens. Her work has been published in Conflict, Security & Development (2019); The International Journal of Feminist Politics (2018); The Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs (2017), and she has a book chapter on women’s livelihoods in post-conflict Nepal (2018). She recently published an article, “How COVID-19 Worsens Gender Equality in Nepal,” in The Diplomat (2020). After her PhD, Luna worked as a researcher at the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW), Ottawa, where she researched the ‘impact of COVID-19 pandemic on racialized women in Canada. Her work is interdisciplinary and contributes to the scholarship on women, peace and security; gender and war; feminist intersectional approach; DDR; post-war reconstruction; and gender & COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ketty Anyeko

Postdoctoral Fellow

Ketty Anyeko is a Vanier Scholar, finishing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She is also a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at UBC. She has a BA in Psychology from Makerere University (Uganda) and an MA in Peace Studies from Notre Dame University (USA). Ketty has nearly two decades’ experience in women, peacebuilding, transitional justice, gender, relief and development programme planning and implementation. Her work involved action-oriented research, policy advocacy and documentation with conflict-affected communities. She primarily worked in Uganda, but also engaged internationally with conflict-affected grassroots women, communities and policy makers in Cambodia, Philippines, Colombia, South Africa, Kenya, United States, and more recently, Canada. Ketty is also a co-applicant on a SSHRC Partnership Development grant on Transformative Memory, and a research advisor of the African Ancestry Project. Her current doctoral research focuses on justice and reparations for women survivors of wartime sexual violence in Uganda. Ketty’s postdoctoral research will focus on conflict prevention and implementation of WPS agenda through the lens of racism in Canada with particular attention to experiences of Black and Indigenous women.  

Hayley Newman-Petryshen 

Research Assistant

Hayley recently graduated with an Honor Bachelor of Arts from Wilfrid Laurier University, where she studied international development, international public policy, and political science. Hayley frequently approaches her work with a feminist lens and has research interests in the fields of gender and climate change in the Global South. Hayley is attending McGill as a McCall MacBain Scholar for an MA in Political Science with a Development Studies Option. In addition to her studies, Hayley enjoys teaching and participating in grassroots advocacy initiatives, particularly as they relate to menstrual equity, food security, and community care.  

Pragya Tikku

Research Assistant

Pragya Tikku is a development professional with 3+ years of work experience. She is currently pursuing her Master’s in Public Policy from Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University. In her recent role as a Consultant for UN Women India office, she contributed technically to the development of programme strategies and provide substantive support in the area of Intergovernmental Processes, Inter-Agency Coordination, Humanitarian Response and Women, Peace & Security. Having graduated from Lady Irwin College with a Masters in Human Development and Childhood Studies, her expertise lies under programmes and policies for women and children. In the past, she has worked with NGOs and academic institutions on the issues of budget, women empowerment, gender-responsive budgeting and Child Rights.

Laurence Deschamps-Laporte

Research Lead: Canada's Defence Relations

l’Université de Montréal

Laurence Deschamps-Laporte is a visiting professor of political science at l’Université de Montréal in Canada and a visiting research fellow at the Montréal Centre for International Studies (CÉRIUM). She has served three Canadian ministers of foreign affairs, most recently as Chief of Staff. She has worked on the design and implementation of multiple policy initiatives related to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. She completed her DPhil at the Middle East Centre and Oriental Studies Faculty at the University of Oxford and at Magdalen College as a Rhodes Scholar. She also holds a MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA with Honors from University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill which she attended as a Morehead-Cain scholar. She speaks several languages including Arabic which she has studied for 14 years. She has worked and conducted research across the Middle East.

Maria Martin de Almagro Iniesta 

Research Lead: Gender and Climate Change

University of Ghent

Maria is Assistant Professor at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at the University of Ghent (Belgium). She is also member of the FBA Research Working Groups and of Varieties of Peace Network. Furthermore, she is Associate Editor for the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding and Co-Convener of the Gender and Politics Section of the Belgium Political Science Association. 

Previously, she was Assistant Professor in Gender and Politics at the Université de Montréal (Canada) and Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge. 

Her research focuses on gender politics, international security governance and the micro-dynamics of war-to-peace transitions (i.e. peacebuilding practices and transnational justice mechanisms) in Sub-Saharan Africa. Much of her work investigates concepts and performances of authority, legitimacy, and power through poststructural and postcolonial accounts and feminist and interpretive methodologies.   Her primary empirical research interests focus on the United Nations Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security agenda.  She has written extensively on the advocacy around, and implementation of, the Women, Peace and Security agenda at global, national, and local levels in post-conflict contexts.  

Megan MacKenzie 

Research Co-Lead: Anticipating Future Challenges

Simon Fraser University

Megan is Professor and Simons Chair in International Law and Human Security in the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University. Her research is broadly aimed at reducing war; it bridges feminist theory, critical security studies, and critical/post development studies. Megan has contributed research on topics including sexual violence in war, truth and reconciliation commissions, military culture, images and international relations, and women in combat. 

Nicole Wegner

Research Co-Lead: Anticipating Future Challenges

University of Sydney

Dr. Nicole Wegner (she/her/hers) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Gender and War in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. Her research explores gendered causes, dynamics and legitimization of violent global conflicts. Her current and past research has included individual and collaborative projects on military suicide, gendered nationalism in peacekeeping discourses, gender and climate crises, and feminist foreign policies. She tweets from @nlwegner. 

Sarah Nandi

McGill University

Sarah Nandi is a second year PhD student at McGill University in the Department of Political Science (Gender Option). Her research interests include humanitarianism and gender-based violence (GBV) in protracted refugee situations. She examines questions surrounding long-term GBV prevention, momentary GBV assessments, and immediate formal and informal remedies comparatively in the South Asian subcontinent and the Levant.

Before coming to McGill, she completed an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at the University of Oxford where she wrote her dissertation on the nexus between humanitarianism and development in the Sahrawi refugee camps of Algeria. Following this, she was a Fulbright-Nehru research scholar focusing on state- and humanitarian-led rehabilitation programs for refugee survivors of sexual violence during the 1971 Bangladesh independence war in Kolkata as an affiliate with the Calcutta Research Group and Sanskrit College.

Isabella Aung

Queen's University

Isabella Aung is a doctoral candidate researching women’s political participation in the ongoing anti-military social media movement in Myanmar. She earned an honors degree in International Relations with a minor in Mathematics from Linfield College, Oregon, and an MA degree in Political Science from Simon Fraser University. She also completed a semester abroad in Politics, French, and Arabic at the University of Nottingham, UK, with first-class honors standing. She joined the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University as a doctoral student in September 2020. She is currently a UBC Myanmar Initiative Fellow. She holds a doctoral scholarship, funded by the Research Network on Women, Peace, and Security (RN-WPS) at McGill University. She also holds a Graduate Research Fellowship at the Centre for International and Defence Policy (CIDP). She has been recently recognized as an emerging scholar by le Réseau d’analyse stratégique/the Network for Strategic Analysis (RAS-NSA).

Decolonizing academia and incorporating the lived experiences of women of Color into academic discourse are her ultimate goals as a researcher. Her research interests include Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), women of Color's electoral representation, and grassroots women's activism against authoritarianism. She specializes in Gender and Politics and Comparative Politics. In terms of methodology, she is trained in both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her regional expertise is in Canada and Myanmar.

Kim Beaulieu

University of British Columbia

Kim Beaulieu is an incoming Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia. Her work focuses on the intersection between prison reform (in the broader context of security sector reforms) and peacebuilding processes in (post-)conflict contexts. She holds an M.A. and an undergraduate degree from the University of Montréal. Her previous work focused on feminist foreign policies, especially the strategic and political dimensions of adopting a feminist label in foreign policy.

Kim did a semester abroad at American University during her undergraduate studies as part of the Killam Fellowship award, an excellence grant for undergraduate students. More recently, she was a research assistant for Prof. Laurence Deschamps-Laporte, a research lead at the RN-WPS. She helped organize the Network's first roundtable, which focused on National Action Plans, and published a “What We Heard Report” following the event.

Emma Fingler

Queen's University

Emma Fingler (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University, specializing in disaster response, humanitarianism, gender, and security with a focus on South and Southeast Asia. Prior to joining Queen’s, she was the Special Assistant to the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations (UN) in Nepal and previously a Junior Professional Consultant with the UN. Her experience working abroad on humanitarian, development, and coordination issues included major disaster response operations. She holds an M.A. in Global Governance from the University of Waterloo’s Balsillie School of International Affairs and a B.A. Hons. Political Studies from Bishop’s University.