The Higher Research Seminar: ‘Gender, Natural Resources and Conflict Prevention: Politics, Matter and Imaginaries’ – Maria Martin de Almagro, University of Ghent

Wednesdays 13.15 to 14.30 in Eden 367, unless otherwise indicated. 

Chair: Senior lecturer Catia Gregoratti | Department of Political Science (lu.se)

The Department’s Higher Research Seminar Series | Department of Political Science (lu.se)

Dr. Maria Martin de Almagro, University of Ghent

RESEARCHER IN CONFLICT AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

I am a Research Professor at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and a member of its Conflict Research Group (CRG). I am the Co-Head editor of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding and the Research Lead on Gender and Climate Change for the Canada Research Network on Women, Peace and Security. Furthermore, I am also a member of the FBA Research Working Groups and of the Varieties of Peace Research Network.

Research Interests

My research is at the intersection of gender studies, international peacebuilding governance, and the role of knowledge production and meaning-making practices in world politics. Theoretically, much of my work investigates concepts and performances of authority, legitimacy, and power through poststructural and postcolonial accounts and feminist and interpretive methodologies.  Empirically, as an IR scholar and an Africanist, I study the micro-dynamics of war-to-peace transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa with the aim of producing original findings that derive from an in-depth study of this region, but that can at the same time inform broader debates in the discipline. More concretely, I have written extensively on the advocacy around, and implementation of, the United Nations Security Council’s Women, Peace, and Security agenda at global, national, and local levels in post-conflict contexts.  

I have extensive experience doing field research in conflict-affected countries, including field research experience in Burundi, Liberia, DRC, and South Africa. I am interested in the power of inductive research and grounded theory methodologies for bringing to the fore the world vision of the research subjects.