@umeauniversitet.bsky.social is a good place to work, PhD students in Sweden are employed with regular benefits and full time salary, and Umeå is a nice city! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ume%C3%A5

We bring resistance studies and peacebuilding into greater dialogue, and examine how CSOs and soc movm actors resist regime efforts to build illiberal peace, and instead work to imagine and construct forms of peace that are more inclusive and egalitarian, though not necessarily liberal.

While studies have examined how illiberal peacebuilding is practiced in various contexts, few have thus far asked how people respond to, and possibly resist, illiberal ideas and practices of peacebuilding.

Read the award decision and the article here: bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/eur...

Tack @niklasbolin.bsky.social ! ☺️

If you are doing research on anything related to gender/women's activism/women's rights policies + authoritarianism/auth or hybrid regimes/illiberal peacebuilding, let's connect!

The aim of the project is to explore how women’s rights norms are mobilized as political tools in authoritarian, conflict-affected contexts, and analyze the effects of these processes. This is pursued through a comparative study of Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

8/ For more on our findings from this project, especially on the dynamics of the encounter between the WPS agenda and an illiberal state, see this article: bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journal...

7/ Read our policy brief here: umu.diva-portal.org/smash/record...

6/ These four recommendations can serve as a basis for reflection within international peacebuilding and donor organizations, prompting dialogue about how specific practices and forms of support can be revised to avoid entrenching existing hierarchies and better facilitate a gender-just peace.

5/ To change these patterns, we suggest that int actors need to identify local partners beyond the “usual suspects”; simplify funding processes and provide flexible funding; better analyze and understand context and conflict dynamics; and challenge the state-centrism of int peacebuilding support.

4/ Importantly, we do not suggest that people working as gender advisers, or on WPS projects intentionally seek to conserve patterns of inequality. Rather, we found that such effects result from structural constraints, organizational cultures, and established ways of working.

3/These findings resonate with studies of other peacebuilding contexts too. A key question is therefore how the tendency for international gender expertise to reinforce power imbalances can be countered. How can international gender expertise better achieve its ambition to build a gender-just peace?

2/This resulted from narrow perceptions about "local partners"; administratively demanding and donor-driven funding; insufficient contextual knowledge; and a state-centric approach which enabled the MMR gov to manipulate international aid in favor of efforts to silence and exclude critical voices.