Visiting Scholars
Dr Asha Achuthan is Assistant Professor at the Advanced Centre for Women's Studies, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India.
Asha initially trained, for her graduate and post-graduate studies, in medicine from Calcutta University.
She went on to work on an Mphil in Women's Studies from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, focussing on third world women and their lived experience of development, and thereafter completed a PhD in Cultural Studies from Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, looking at feminist standpoint theory and experience.
Asha’s current work explores the contexts of gender and biomedicine, with a focus on feminist epistemological critiques of the same. Asha teaches courses in feminist science studies, sexualities and desire, and queering feminism, and has designed and teaches courses in feminist methodology in the PhD programme at the Centre.
Asha recently concluded a multi-sited study on the appearance and journey of gender-sexuality as a metaphor in medical text and practice, that also explored changing terms of legibility and entry of persons of gender-marginal lives and experiences into contemporary healthcare spaces in India.
Asha has published in the areas of gender diversity in science institutions, feminist standpoint methodologies, interdisciplinarity in higher education, sexuality and the nation, and the normative character of biomedical technologies. Asha’s recent publications are listed at https://tiss.edu/view/9/employee/asha-achuthan/
Asha’s most recent work is on the dai figure in colonial India, with a book manuscript currently in press.
Dr Nandita Banerjee Dhawan is Assistant Professor at the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, India. She has held administrative positions of Director and Joint Director at the School of Women’s Studies in the past.
Dr Dhawan has explored how patriarchal institutions deploy tropes of the (il)legitimate through the blending of economic liberalism and cultural illiberalism to reinforce the majoritarian privilege and hegemony of the ‘New Indian Middle Class’. She has studied gender and intersectional violence as well as the challenges faced by the Indian women’s/feminist movement due to the category of ‘difference’.
Dr Dhawan has extensive inter/national feminist research collaborations with academics and activists on issues of marriage, domestic violence, the transformation of higher education, and urban (re)structuring. She has published widely on these issues, including co-editng three volumes.
Dr Dhawan is collaborating with Professor Dina Zoe Belluigi and Dr Ulrike Vieten of the Mitchell Institute at Queen’s University Belfast and Dr Asha Achuthan of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences on the project, “Counter-stories of author-ity in transition: Women in the Indian Academy”. The research explores the agency and contributions of first-generation, gender-marginal academics in Indian higher education institutions. Of particular interest to Dr Dhawan, is how their multi-generational insights will contribute to our understanding about the challenges of democratising social formation against main(male)stream authority at various points in time, including methodologies, knowledge systems and participation within the hegemonic cultures of the academy.
For more details, please refer: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1198-0572
Professor Darren Kew is the recipient of a US Friends of Queen’s University Belfast Visiting Professorship, awarded by the US-UK Fulbright Commission.
Darren is Associate Professor and former Chair of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance, and Executive Director of the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
He studies the relationship between conflict resolution methods – particularly interfaith and inter-ethnic peacebuilding – and democratic development in Africa. Much of his work focuses on the role of civil society groups in this development.
He has also been a consultant on democracy and peace initiatives to the United Nations, USAID, US Institute of Peace, the US State Department, and to a number of NGOs, including the Carter Center. He monitored the last six Nigerian elections and the 2007 elections in Sierra Leone.
Professor Kew is author of numerous works on Nigerian politics and conflict resolution, including the book Civil Society, Conflict Resolution, and Democracy in Nigeria (Syracuse UP, 2016), and his articles have appeared in International Negotiation, the Journal of Democracy, and Current History, among others.
Professor Peter Shirlow (FaCSS) is the Director of the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University.
He was formerly the Deputy Director of the Institute for Conflict Transformation and Social Justice – the predecessor to the Mitchell Institute - at Queen's University Belfast.
Peter’s research interests focus on the themes of political violence, post-conflict transformation, policing and community and the impact of ethno-sectarian reproduction. This includes a particular emphasis upon former combatants and their inclusion/exclusion within civic society. He has undertaken a series of consultations with political actors in Montenegro, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia. He has also undertaken significant survey research regarding ethno-sectarian based segregation that has studied inter-community immobility, the power and influence of prejudice and the psychological impact upon families living within interfaced communities. He has published extensively on these issues.
His latest book Northern Ireland a generation after Good Friday: Lost futures and new horizons in the ‘long peace’ (Manchester University Press, 2021) was co-authored with Mitchell Institute Fellow Professor Katy Hayward, and others.
He is the Independent Chair of the Executive Office's Employers' Guidance on Recruiting People with Conflict-Related Convictions Working Group and a board member of the mental health charity Threshold. He sits on the editorial boards of Irish Political Studies and International Planning Studies.
Professor Shirlow has undertaken conflict transformation work in Northern Ireland and has used that knowledge in exchanges with governments, former combatants and NGOs in the former Yugoslavia, Moldova, Bahrain and Iraq, He has also presented talks to members of the US Senate and House of Representatives and is a regular media contributor.
Read more here.
Emma Sky OBE is the founding Director of Yale’s International Leadership Center. She is a Lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs where she teaches great power competition, global affairs and Middle East politics.
She is a member of the Wilton Park Advisory Council and a trustee of the HALO Trust.
Emma has served in several advisory roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has also worked in the Palestinian territories to develop Palestinian Institutions and promote co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians. Emma has provided technical assistance on a range of issues including human rights, justice reform, security sector reform and conflict resolution in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
Emma is the author of the highly acclaimed The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq (Public Affairs, 2015) and In a Time of Monsters: Travelling in a Middle East in Revolt (Atlantic Books, 2019).
Both Emma Sky and Bonnie Weir will be working with us to consolidate the work already done between Yale and the Mitchell Institute, in particular, in relation to the emerging Peace Partnership, which aims to enhance peace leadership globally, and to generate practical benefits and ideas for leaders facing real-time conflict dilemmas.
Read more here.
Dr Eva Urban-Devereux was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Mitchell Institute.
As Visiting Scholar, Eva will be building on the networks and collaborations that she developed during her time at QUB.
This includes a collaborative arts postgraduate teaching and research project, led by Weimar Bauhaus University, involving postgraduate research students, with the other partners being QUB, University of Rennes 2, Concordia University Montreal, UCC, and the University of Barcelona.
Eva will also be involved in the Creative Approaches to Public Space (CAPS) international Graduate School Project involving the University of Rennes 2 and QUB, offering opportunities to postgraduates.
Eva has recently been appointed as EUR CAPS Visiting Professor for the International Chair in Humanities and Social Sciences for the duration of four months at the University of Rennes 2. Eva will be contributing to talks, seminars, and workshops during her tenure. She will also be co-organising the CAPS International Summer School 2023.
She is currently researching and writing a monograph entitled Remorse Drama and Celtic Romanticism: Staging Conflict and Cosmopolitanism since the Scottish Enlightenment.
Eva is the author of La Philosophie des Lumières dans le Théâtre Breton: Tradition et Influences (Enlightenment Philosophy in Breton Theatre: Tradition and Influences) (Rennes: TIR Université de Rennes 2, 2019).
James Waller, is the inaugural Christopher J. Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice and director of the Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs for the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut.
James’ fieldwork includes research in Germany, Israel, Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Guatemala.
During his previous Visiting Scholar tenure at the Institute, James carried out research in Northern Ireland which informed his latest book A Troubled Sleep: Risk and Resilience in Contemporary Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press, September 2021).
James has published extensively and his book Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2007) was widely acclaimed.
James’ current research project is a comparative analysis of the literal and figurative notion of “walls” in deeply divided societies. Grounded in the lived experience of people in deeply divided societies, the following forms of walls will be analyzed: physical walls of social separation, symbolic walls of identity separation, and hidden walls of geographical separation.
Read more here.
Professor Azrini Wahidin is Head of School for the School of Social and Political Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney.
Her work links criminal justice and social justice, looking at post-colonialism, race, sexuality, gender and social exclusion. She also has a strong interest in research methodologies and research ethics.
Professor Azrini Wahidin’s current research focuses on the issues of imprisonment, penal policy, the legacy of conflict in Northern Ireland and South Africa, former female ex-combatants, violence against women, women in the criminal justice system, transitions out of custody, the criminalisation of migrants, the engendering of punishment, LGBT+ prisoners and the experiences of elders in prison in the UK and USA.
Her previous work focused on older women in prison, managing the needs of elders in prison, the meaning of death and dying for prisoners, older LGBT persons, resettlement, the body and dirt.
Azrini has been a recipient of awards and grants, such as ERSC, AHRC, Leverhulme, BA Academy, Horizon 2020, COST, MOJ, NIP, NICCY.
Azrini is the author of a range of academic articles in international journals and edited collections.
Her latest edited book co-authored with the Mitchell Institute’s Professor John Brewer: Ex-Combatants' Voices: Transitioning from War to Peace in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022).
Azrini’s next book Under Siege: The role of women in liberation movements under the Apartheid regime and the transition to peace in South Africa is forthcoming. This research builds on her single authored book Ex-Combatants, Gender and Peace in Northern Ireland - Women, Political Protest and the Prison Experience (Palgrave Press, 2016). The book focused on female former politically motivated prisoners and the role of transitional justice in post-conflict societies.
Read more here.
Dr Bonnie Weir is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Yale University, where she is Co-Director of the Program on Peace and Development (PPD).
The latter role has seen her co-organize with QUB two major and successful Conferences co-hosted by Yale and the Mitchell Institute at Yale University, in 2018 and 2022. She teaches courses on War and Peace in Northern Ireland and Terrorism.
Bonnie’s recent publications include an article in A U.S Special Envoy to Northern Ireland would help to preserve the peace (The Hill, 16 March 2022) and Brexit and Border Town: Troubles Ahead in Northern Ireland? (The New York Review, 11 April 2019).
Bonnie is currently working on a book on the Aftermath of Peace processes as well as projects on sectarianism and minority rights.
Her research is grounded in extensive, qualitative fieldwork paired with original spatial and survey experimental data through which she hopes to highlight the very personal and local nature of insurgency, counter-insurgency, and societal division.
Both Emma Sky and Bonnie Weir will be working with us to consolidate the work already done between Yale and the Mitchell Institute, in particular in relation to the emerging Peace Partnership, which aims to enhance peace leadership globally, and to generate practical benefits and ideas for leaders facing real-time conflict dilemmas.
Read more here.