Women in Leadership: A Call for an Intersectional Approach to Global Affairs, with Dr. Yolande Bouka
Our understanding of international relations is too often anchored in a narrow conceptualization of the world and the norms that should govern the interactions between actors. Indeed, while we analyze global affairs based on normative frameworks that emerged out of observing how Christian Europeans men engaged in politics, we are often puzzled when these analytical tools fail to yield adequate insights into some of the world’s more pressing challenges. This talk offers an alternative by exploring the range of possibilities available when we decenter masculine European foundation of international relations to understand global affairs dynamics.
Biography: Dr. Yolande Bouka is a Visiting Assistant Professor of International Affairs and African Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. She is a scholar-practitioner of peace and conflict whose research and teaching bridge International Relations (IR) and Comparative Politics with specific interests in contentious politics, dynamics of war, gender and security, and field research ethics in Sub-Saharan Africa. She holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from American University. Her current research is a multi-sited historical and political analysis of female combatants in Southern Africa. Her previous research which is now a book project “In the Shadow of Prison: Power, Identity, and Transitional Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda” focused on the social and political impacts of the power-laden nature of the Rwandan transitional justice (TJ) program. Her research has received support from the Fulbright Scholar Program and the American Association of University Women. In addition to her academic work, she has extensive experience with development and peace and security research agencies. She has worked with and offered support to USAID, the UK Department for International Development, the United Nations, the African Union, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the United States Institute of Peace. Between 2014 and 2016 she was a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in the Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division, focusing on Africa’s Great Lakes Region.
