A defining moment in my career as a doctoral student was publishing my International Affairs article "Queering Women, Peace and Security" in January 2016. Working with editors to bring the piece to life and then seeing the article publish was life changing as a writer and an academic. Since then I've learned from a number of professors that they're teaching the article to their students which is exciting! The article has also been cited in a few places by folks working on queer international relations, feminist security studies and those working in emergency humanitarian response. Here I want to give a shout-out to a number of those places that have referenced my work.
First up is a fantastic report (accessible here) by International Alert. Authors Henri Myrttinen and Megan Daigle report about sexual and gender minorities in conflict. From the summary:
Peacebuilding, in its essence, is about building more inclusive and less violent societies, with gender often being one of the most salient factors impacting on social exclusion. Questions of sexual orientation and gender identity that do not fall into the binary categories of women and men or do not adhere to heterosexual norms have been largely absent from gender and peacebuilding research, poolicy and programming. Based on our research conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Lebanon and Nepal, as well as a review of secondary literature, we demonstrate how identifying – or being identified by others – as belonging to a sexual and gender minority often adds additional layers of vulnerability, precariousness and danger to lives already under threat.
In May 2017 Melanie Richter-Montpetit and Cynthia Weber published an overview of the20 years of Queer International Relations for Oxford Research Eynclopedia. The entry which is freely accessible online includes a section about gender, peace and security where Queering WPS is cited.
In August my article was referenced as part a BookForum omnivore "Gay rights human rights" blog post.
Finding time to reflect on the way the research is finding a home in the field is a heartening motivator to keep on keeping on with this lifesived project that is the dissertation. As the fall semester gets underway I'm beginning what, if all goes as planned, is my fifth and final year in the PhD program. My dissertation continues to build on the work I began to explore in that IA article. I can only hope my future will also prove to be relevant to the academics, students and the policy community.