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New course at STK: KFL4065 Gender, Peace and Conflict

How does gender shape armed conflict, political violence and peacebuilding, and how do peace and conflict shape our notions of gender? In the autumn of 2021, the Centre for Gender Research (STK) will offer a new MA course, KFL4065 Gender, Peace and Conflict, which aims to explore these questions. Professor Inger Skjelsbæk will be the course leader.

Group of women in hats holding a banner that says "Peace"

Jane Addams (second from left), with other American peace delegates, on the deck of a ship heading to the International Congress of Women held at The Hague in 1915. Photo: George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ggbain-18848)

In this course, the students will learn how research in different scholarly fields analyzes and explains peace and conflict from the optics of gender. We will explore a number of salient themes, including gender norms, security, peacebuilding, conflict-related sexual violence, children born of war, transitional justice, and violent extremism. The course also examines how gender dimensions can be integrated into actual policy, as well as how gender mainstreaming can be implemented in policy and practice communities.

Teaching and activities

Professor Inger Skjelsbæk will be the course leader. Skjelsbæk has carried out extensive research on themes relating to gender, peace, violence, conflict, extremism, and security, and has also played a central role in the development of the Centre on Gender, Peace and Security at the Peace Research Institute (PRIO). She is currently leading the European Research Council project EuroWARCHILD, which seeks to understand the experiences and needs of European children born of war. Alongside Skjelsbæk, some classes will be taught by visiting lecturers, who are leading specialists on their respective topic.

The course activities will include a visit to the Centre on Gender, Peace and Security at PRIO. This visit will allow students to meet people who work in different policy and practice capacities with gender, peace and conflict issues. These resource people will discuss how they use, and translate, research into policy and practice, which the students, in turn, will be asked to focus on in a mid-term paper based on a thematic topic of choice.

Learning outcomes

After completing the course, students will have an overview of central themes linked to gender, peace and conflict, and knowledge of central concepts used in analyzing these themes. Students will also have an understanding of the challenges and outcomes linked to different methodological approaches within relevant fields of scholarship. Furthermore, there will be an emphasis throughout the course on how to translate theoretical knowledge into policy and practice.