The Team
Professor Jacqui True (Lead, Co-Chief Investigator)
Jacqui True, FASSA, is Professor of International Relations and Director of Monash University’s Centre for Gender, Peace and Security. She is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and a Global Fellow, Peace Research Institute (PRIO), Oslo. She received her PhD from York University, Toronto, Canada, an honorary doctorate from Lund University Sweden in 2018, and has held academic positions at Michigan State University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Auckland as well as visiting fellowships at the Australian National University and Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her current research is focused on three areas of relevance to the broader Women, Peace and Security agenda: Understanding the political economy of violence against women, including sexual and gender-based violence in conflict in Asia Pacific; Examining the gender dimensions and women’s roles in recruitment, support for and prevention of violent extremism and; Analysing gender-sensitive peace agreements and their impact on women’s participation after conflict. This research is funded by the Australian Research Council, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the United Nations. Her book, The Political Economy of Violence Against Women (Oxford, 2012) won the American Political Science Association’s 2012 biennial prize for the best book in human rights, the British International Studies Association International Political Economy book prize in 2013, and the 2015 biennial Australian Political Science Association’s Carole Pateman book prize for gender and politics. She recently edited the volume Scandalous Economics: The Politics of Gender and Financial Crises (Oxford, 2016) with Aida Hozić and is co-editor with Sara Davies of The Oxford Handbook on Women, Peace and Security (2018).
Ms Yasmin Chilmeran
Yasmin Chilmeran is a doctoral candidate at Monash University. Her work focuses on women’s civil society, peace processes and participation in post-conflict settings, with a focus on Iraq and the MENA region more broadly. She is one of the PhD candidates working on a larger Linkage project relating to gender provisions in peace processes and is responsible for the MENA cases within that project. Yasmin’s doctoral thesis will investigate the gender dimensions of peace in Iraq from the perspective of women’ civil society, specifically examining the way organisations navigate political participation opportunities and barriers in the face of increased violence. Her previous Masters research analysed the role of women’s civil society organisations in Jordan and the local and international gender norms affecting their work. She is also a member of the Young-Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in Australia and has previously interned at Amnesty International in New Zealand and the Border Crossing Observatory at Monash University.
Professor Sara Davies (Co-Chief Investigator)
Sara Davies is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and Professor at the Centre for Governance and Public Policy and Griffith Asia Institute, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, Australia. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Gender Peace and Security Centre, School of Social Sciences, Monash University.
Sara’s areas of study is the Asia-Pacific, and her research interests are in human rights and global health governance, patterns of systemic sexual and gender-based violence in conflict-affected countries, and responsibility to protect principle. Sara Davies has published in Review of International Studies, Security Dialogue, and International Affairs. Sara is author of Continuing Contagion (Johns Hopkins University Press), Global Politics of Health (Polity) and Legitimatizing Rejection: International Refugee Law in Asia (Martinus Nijhoff), and co-author of Disease Diplomacy (Johns Hopkins University Press) with Adam Kamradt-Scott and Simon Rushton. She is co-editor, with Jacqui True, of The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Mr Elliott Dolan-Evans
Elliot Dolan-Evans is a doctoral candidate at Monash University. Elliot has an interest in the influence that international institutions have on both women’s participation during the peace process, and women’s socio-politico-economic rights in post-conflict society. His thesis examines the role that post-conflict economic restructuring, instigated by international financial and development institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, has on women’s participation in Bosnia Herzegovina, Myanmar and the Ukraine. Elliot’s thesis aims to provide a gendered analysis of the effects that economic reforms have in post-conflict society, in order to inform and better coordinate state rebuilding for the benefit of both women and men. Elliot is a Bachelor of Medicine/Surgery and Bachelor of Law graduate, and volunteers to assist refugee and Indigenous women and men with legal applications, civil problems, and health checks.
Associate Professor Nicole George (Co-Chief Investigator)
Nicole’s research focuses on the gendered politics of conflict and peacebuilding, violence, security and participation. She has a strong interest in feminist institutional theory, as well as conceptual debates on regulatory pluralism and contested notions of (gendered) order as they are evident in local and global politics. Since the early 2000s, she has conducted research in the Pacific Islands region focusing on gender politics, gendered security and post conflict transition in Fiji, New Caledonia, Bougainville and Solomon Islands. She has worked in collaboration with women’s organisations, women decision-makers and women policy-makers in these settings to progress aspects of this work. She has led large, externally funded, comparative research projects examining how women’s rights to security are institutionalised in Pacific Island countries (2013-2016) and where and how women participate in post-conflict transformation (as part of a broader collaborative ARC Linkage Project (2016-2020). Aside from the scholarly publications listed below, she has made influential contributions to national and regional intergovernmental policy forums on gender, security and development programs and is a regular contributor to national and regional on-line opinion editorial sites.
Dr Sarah Hewitt
Dr Sarah Hewitt completed her PhD in April 2020. Supported by a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) scholarship under the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project ‘Toward Inclusive Peace: Mapping Gender Provisions in Peace Agreements,’ her thesis titled, Opportunities for Transformation? The Implementation of Gender Provisions in Peace Agreements and Women’s Participation in Post-Conflict Transitions, explores women’s participation during and after peace processes in Nepal and Kenya. Combining feminist political economy analysis with theories of patriarchal social structures, Sarah’s PhD research examines how women’s participation and the inclusion of gender provisions in peace agreements affects women’s ongoing participation and their rights in post-conflict societies. She raises critical questions on the social structures that constrain women’s participation and (re)produce and aggravate gender inequalities in post-conflict societies. Sarah examines the implementation of peace agreements and post-conflict constitutions to understand the enabling and constraining factors affecting women’s participation and women’s rights.
During her doctoral study, Sarah has engaged expansively with government policymakers, non-governmental organisations and civil society advocates as well as scholarly communities. For instance, Sarah assisted with the ‘Towards Inclusive Peace’ Linkage Project stakeholder conferences in Bangkok, Thailand, and Nadi, Fiji, attended by practitioners, scholars and policymakers from across Asia and the Pacific. Sarah has publications in International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP) and Global Responsibility to Protect (GR2P) with her article in GR2P winning the Monash University Faculty of Arts Postgraduate Publication prize in 2017. She has collaborated on co-authored chapters for distinguished university presses including Oxford University Press with experts in the field of Feminist International Relations, peace and conflict studies, the Women, Peace and Security agenda, and the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
Sarah has undertaken teaching associate duties for two undergraduate courses—Introduction to International Relations and Gender and International Relations—receiving a ‘Purple Letter for Outstanding Teaching’ for the latter. She is currently unit coordinator for the third-stage unit, Gender and International Relations, with the Monash University Faculty of Arts in Semester 2, 2020.
Associate Professor Katrina Lee-Koo (Co-Chief Investigator)
Katrina Lee-Koo is an Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at Monash University and founding Deputy Director of Monash GPS (2015-2020).
Katrina teaches and researches in the fields of gender, peace and security, and women and leadership. Her research focuses upon women’s leadership and inclusion in peace and security sectors, women’s political leadership and the gendered politics of armed conflict.
Her most recent book publications are: “Young Women and Leadership”, (co-edited with Lesley Pruitt, New York: Routledge, 2020), Children and Global Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2015 with Kim Huynh and Bina D’Costa) and Ethics and Global Security (Routledge, 2014 with Anthony Burke and Matt McDonald). She has a forthcoming project with Zareh Ghazarian on “Gender and Political Leadership in Australia” (under contract with UNSW Press).
She has also published in her areas of research in: Foreign Policy Analysis, International Political Science Review, International Studies Perspectives, Third World Quarterly, Feminist Review, the Australian Journal of Political Science and elsewhere.
She was recently the sole and chief investigator of an ARC Discovery Project entitled ‘Gender after Conflict’ (ending December 2019). She is a co-Chief Investigator (with Sara Davies, Nicole George and Jacqui True) on the ARC Linkage Project ‘Towards Inclusive Peace: Monitoring the Gender Provisions in Peace Settlements’ with partner organization the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). She is the World YWCA’s Partner Researcher (with Lesley Pruitt) on the DFAT funded project ‘Mobilising Young Women’s Leadership in the Asia Pacific’ which works across nine countries in the region. She is also the lead researcher on a partnership with Plan International on a research series entitled ‘Adolescent Girls in Crisis’ which has conducted research with adolescent girls in conflict-affected sites around the world.
Katrina has won numerous teaching and leadership awards including the Monash Dean of Arts Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Teaching, the Monash Dean of Arts Commendation for Research Enterprise, the ANU Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the ANU’s Gender Champion Award and the national Australian Teaching and Learning Council’s Citation for Excellence in Teaching.
She is currently an associate editor of the International feminist Journal of Politics and on the editorial board for the Australian Journal of Political Science, the Australian Journal of Politics and History, the Australian Journal of International Affairs and Politics and Gender.
Dr Alexandra Phelan
Dr Alexandra Phelan is Deputy Director of Monash Gender, Peace and Security Centre (Monash GPS), and a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Monash University.
Alex completed her PhD in 2019, which examined why the Colombian government alternated between counterinsurgency and negotiation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Based on an extensive examination of negotiation documents and primary FARC material, fieldwork and interviews with former and active FARC, ELN, M-19 and AUC members, she critically examined the role that insurgent legitimation activities had on influencing Colombian government response between 1982-2016. Before she was appointed a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Monash GPS. She was also a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Centre for Security Studies, Walsh School of Foreign Service (2019).
Alex’s research at GPS focuses on gendered approaches to understanding terrorism and violent extremism. Her research interests include insurgent governance and legitimation activities, insurgent women, political violence and organised crime with particular focus on Latin America. She has a forthcoming edited book Terrorism, Gender and Women: Toward an Integrated Research Agenda (Routledge, 2021). She currently serves on the editorial board for the journal, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.
Ms Yolanda Riveros Morales
Yolanda Riveros Morales is an Economist from Colombia. She has a Masters in Economy from Los Andes University, Colombia. Yolanda gained experience in the development and implementation of public policy through her work with the Colombian Government, particularly in the areas of gender, human rights and poverty. Some of the policy projects that Yolanda has played a key role in include the ‘Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Strategy’, the ‘Multidimensional Poverty Index (GPI-OPHI)’, and updating the Government’s social service policy to improve access for poor communities. She is currently making use of her skills in data and statistical analyses for the project ‘Towards Inclusive Peace: Mapping Gender Provisions of Peace Agreements’ in the Monash GPS Centre.
Dr Maria Tanyag
Maria Tanyag is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Monash GPS. Together with Jacqui True, she is lead researcher for the collaborative research with ActionAid Australia and other ActionAid country offices on developing “Gender Responsive Alternatives on Climate Change”. The project is a multi-country case study research in Cambodia, Kenya and Vanuatu. Maria recently submitted her doctoral dissertation which investigates sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in crisis settings of armed conflicts and environmental disasters from a feminist political economy perspective. She has published in Women’s Studies International Forum, Gender & Development, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. Her most recent paper on “Resilience, Female Altruism, and Bodily Autonomy” was published in the Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Partner Investigators
Amy Haddad
Amy Haddad is the Principal Sector Specialist for Gender Equality in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In 2017 Amy returned from New York, where she represented Australia at the UN on sustainable development, human rights, humanitarian response and gender equality. In 2014 she was the Vice President of the UN Women Executive Board. She has worked extensively on gender, including on gender sensitive monitoring and evaluation and aid performance assessment, and on prevention of violence against women.
Sharon McIvor
Sharon McIvor works in a policy and program role in the Gender Equality Branch in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She has worked extensively on gender equality and women’s empowerment issues within an aid and development context. Sharon holds a Masters in Anthropology and International Development with a specialisation in gender.