Traditionally, much of the work studying war and conflict has focused on men. Men commonly appear as soldiers, commanders, casualties, and civilians. Women, by contrast, are invisible as combatants, and, when seen, are typically pictured as victims. The field of war and conflict studies is changing: more recently, scholars of war and conflict have paid increasing notice to men as a gendered category and given sizeable attention to women's multiple roles in conflict
and post-conflict settings.The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict focuses on the multidimensionality of gender in conflict, yet it also prioritizes the experience of women,
given both the changing nature of war and the historical de-emphasis on women's experiences. Today's wars are not staged encounters involving formal armies, but societal wars that operate at all levels, from house to village to city. Women are necessarily involved at each level. Operating from this basic intellectual foundation, the editors have arranged the volume into seven core sections: the theoretical foundations of the role of gender in violent conflicts; the sources for studying
contemporary conflict; the conflicts themselves; the post-conflict process; institutions and actors; the challenges presented by the evolving nature of war; and, finally, a substantial set of case studies from
across the globe. Genuinely comprehensive, this Handbook will not only serve as an authoritative overview of this massive topic, it will set the research agenda for years to come.
Author Biography:
Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin holds both the Regents Professorship at the University of Minnesota, and Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School and is Professor of Law at the University of Ulster's Transitional Justice Institute in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 2003, she was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as Special Expert on promoting gender equality in times of
conflict and peace-making. In 2011, she completed a Study on Reparations for Conflict Related Sexual Violence for the OHCHR and UN WOMEN. She has served as an Expert Consultant for the International Criminal Court and the
Council of Europe. Her book Law in Times of Crisis (CUP 2006) was awarded the American Society of International Law's preeminent prize in 2007 - the Certificate of Merit for creative scholarship.
Naomi Cahn is the Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. She has written numerous law review articles and books in the areas of family law, international law, and domestic violence, including On the Frontlines: Gender, War, and the Post-Conflict Process (co-authored with Professors Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Dina Haynes (OUP 2011)). Professor Cahn has been a long-time member of the Executive Committee of the Women in International Law
Interest Group (WILIG) of the American Society of International Law. From 2002 to 2004, Professor Cahn was on leave in Kinshasa, Congo where she worked on issues concerning international criminal justice and sexual
violence
Dina Francesca Haynes is Professor of Law at New England Law | Boston, where she teaches immigration, refugee and asylum law, human trafficking and Constitutional law. She has taught at Georgetown University Law Center and American University's Washington College of Law. Prior to teaching law, she spent a decade practicing international law within international organizations (Director General of the Human Rights Department for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Human Rights Advisor to the OSCE in Serbia and Montenegro, Protection Officer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and has received assignments with the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights. Professor Haynes was also an attorney for the United States Department of Justice and clerked on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. She researches, writes, and engages in policy work and legal advocacy in the areas of human trafficking, international organizations, post-conflict reconstruction, human rights law, immigration, refugee law and migration.
Nahla Valji is the Senior Gender Adviser in the United Nations' Executive Office of the Secretary-General. Prior to this she was the Acting Chief/ Deputy Chief of the Peace and Security section in UN Women's headquarters in New York, where she led f the organization's work on peacekeeping, peace negotiations, transitional justice, and rule of law, involving both global programming and policy work, particularly with regards to the Security Council. She headed the Secretariat for the Global Study
on implementation of resolution 1325, a comprehensive study requested by the Security Council for the 15-year review of women, peace and security and was the founder and editor of the International
Journal of Transitional Justice published by Oxford University Press. Prior to joining the UN, Nahla worked in South Africa, where she led the regional transitional justice work of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and managed the African Transitional Justice Research Network.
