UCD professor named among the world's most influential people in gender policy

Posted 26 March, 2021

• Professor Aisling Swaine is the only Ireland based person included in APolitical's top 100 most influential people in gender policy.

A researcher at University College Dublin has been named among those making the biggest impact globally in the area of gender policy in 2021.

(opens in a new window)Professor Aisling Swaine is the only Ireland based person included in (opens in a new window)APolitical's top 100 most influential people, a list which highlights individuals making a mark in the discipline at local, national, regional and international levels.

The listing includes international policymakers, academics, politicians and activists from over 1,100 nominations received from around the world.

Apolitical is a peer-to-peer learning platform for governments, public servants and policymakers in more than 170 countries.

It aims to connect provide original and curated content that highlights successful policymaking around the world on topics such as gender and inequality, digital government and government innovation.

A Professor of Gender Studies at the UCD School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, Professor Swaine's research and teaching focuses on conflict-related violence against women, transitional justice and global gender policy, with a focus on gender-based violence and on the women, peace and security agenda.

She has published widely on these issues, including her book ‘Conflict-related Violence Against Women: Transforming Transition’ published by Cambridge University Press in 2018, which contributed new ideas on the relationship between gender-based violence within and outside of armed conflict.

Over a career working globally to progress gender equality, she has worked with UN agencies and international NGOs in humanitarian and peacebuilding settings, specialising in implementing policy and programming responses to gender-based violence.

Professor Swaine has also worked at global policy levels with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and UN Women, and continues to consult with international organisations, such as UN Women.

She is affiliated with the LSE Centre on Women, Peace and Security, a Visiting Fellow at the Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University, and previously a Hauser Global Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at the School of Law, New York University.

APolitical's top 100 most influential people in gender policy 2021 includes:

Giselle Carino, CEO for International Planned Parenthood Federation Western Hemisphere Region (IPPFWHR); Patricia Viseur Sellers, Special Adviser to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor on Gender; Suneeta Dhar, Co-Founder and Chair of the South Asia Women Foundation, and Senior Advisor, Jagori, India; Dr Stella Nyanzi, Radical queer feminist scholar, medical anthropologist, social justice activist, human rights defender, and Ugandan opposition politician belonging to the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC); Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand.

The full list is available (opens in a new window)here.

By: David Kearns, Digital Journalist / Media Officer, UCD University Relation