International Political Sociology (2019) 13, 86–107
Collective Discussion: Piecing-Up Feminist
Peace Research
1
A NNICK T.R. W IBBEN
University of San Francisco
C ATIA C ECILIA C ONFORTINI
Wellesley College
S ANAM R OOHI
Universität Erfurt
S ARAI B. A HARONI
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
L EENA VASTAPUU
Tampere University
AND
T IINA VAITTINEN
Tampere University
Feminist peace research is an emerging field of social sciences that is
transdisciplinary, intersectional, and normative—as well as transnational.
Although it draws from disciplines such as peace and conflict research
(in and outside of international relations [IR]) as well as feminist security
studies, it also differs from them in terms of research scope and research
design. Consequently, it not only provides insights on what can be termed
“spectacular” instances of violence or peace but also sharpens our analysis
of the everydayness of reconciliatory measures and the mundaneness of
both violence and peace. As a feminist endeavor, feminist peace research
necessarily asks questions about unequal gender relations and power struc-
tures within any given conflict environment. In this collective discussion
piece, a diverse group of scholars, who formed part of the recently con-
vened Feminist Peace Research Network, explores and further develops
the parameters of this emergent field through a set of short conversation
pieces.
In this collective discussion, we respond to IPS’s call for conversations that decenter
dominant modes of knowledge and challenge the conventional parameters of cur-
rent debates through novel approaches. We propose that these might be found in
the transdisciplinary context of feminist peace research (hereafter FPR). FPR is an
emerging transnational field of research, which is transdisciplinary, intersectional,
normative, and transnational. While drawing from disciplines such as peace and
conflict research (in and outside of IR) as well as feminist security studies, it also
differs from them in terms of scope: FPR tends to further challenge disciplinary
(and other) boundary-making, allowing for conceptual and methodological cross-
pollination to occur. To further the search for (feminist) peace, transdisciplinary
1
Piece up: The act of tagging (spray-paint/marker/carving, a well-organized, very detailed, and well put together
tag on usually a large area), https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=piece%20up.
Wibben, Annick T.R. et al. (2019) Collective Discussion: Piecing-Up Feminist Peace Research
1
. International Political Sociology,
doi: 10.1093/ips/oly034
Corresponding author e-mail: awibben@usfca.edu
© The Author(s) (2018). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association.
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