UCD John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies 
UCD John Hume Institute for Global Irish StudiesUCD Crest

MELANIE HOEWER

Crossing Borders - Gender and Identity in Peace and Conflict Processes

Supervied by: Professor Jennifer Todd, UCD School of Politics and International Relations

ImagesOverview of Project
The project sets out to explore the gender dimension of three conflict and peace processes: Chiapas (Mexico), Northern Ireland and South Africa.

Women have been involved in mobilisation and demobilisation processes against unequal power relations in many countries.

My work will explore the complex relations between the mobilisation against horizontal inequalities within the ethnic and gender dimension. It builds upon new approaches to the study of identities in the process of mobilisation and transformation, building a bridge between theories of ethnic or ethno-class mobilisation, and theories of gender mobilisation, with power as a key variable.

Aims
Further developing of a gender-sensitive approach into the existing literature on ethnic identity in the framework of peace and conflict situations.

Contributing an in-depth analysis of the factors which encourage or discourage the change of the perceptions of gender identity in peace and conflict situations.

Methodology
The analysis of these processes demands detailed examples and rich episodic narratives. Hence I will follow an inductive qualitative research approach, with a particular emphasis on field research within the framework of applied ethnography.

Illustration of Conceptualisation

Illustration of Conceptualisation