A/Prof. Nicole George1, Professor Laura Shepherd, Ms Maima Koro, Dr Nayahamui Rooney, Professor Simon Batterbury, Associate Professor Damian Grenfell
1University Of Queensland, Australia
Biography:
Associate Professor Nicole George's (UQ) research focusses on the gendered politics of conflict and peacebuilding, violence, security and participation in the Pacific Islands. She has a strong interest in regulatory pluralism and contested notions of (gendered) order.
Professor Laura Shepherd is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor of International Relations in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Laura has written extensively on the formulation of UNSCR1325 and subsequent Women, Peace and Security resolutions, and her research engages the motifs of participation and protection that characterise debates about women, peace and security in global politics.
Ms. Maima Koro is the Pacific Research Fellow and academic co-lead of the Regional Perspectives research collaboration, between the Adelaide University with Pacific partners funded by the Defence, Science and Technology Group. She is also pursuing PhD studies, focusing on the intersection of security and development in Pacific communities. Her research interests include Pacific security, geopolitics, and development.
Dr Nayahamui Rooney is a lecturer in ANU's School of Culture, History & Languages. Her research focusses on Papua New Guinea and draws from political economy, economic anthropology and human geography approaches to examine livelihoods in PNG. Themes in her research include migration, changing notions of Melanesian land ownership, livelihoods, social security, gender, and housing.
Professor Simon Batterbury (Uni Melb) specialises in interdisciplinary analysis of environment and development issues – mainly in developing countries. Currently working in New Caledonia-Kanaky (on social and environmental history, and mining on Grande Terre).
Associate Professor Damian Grenfell's (RMIT) research focusses on social conflict and the use and impacts of violence. He has published across the fields of security, transitional justice, gender, development, humanitarian interventions, with a particular interest in socio-political changes in post-conflict and post-colonial states. His work has focused particularly on Timor-Leste
Abstract:
Experiences of gender violence cause harm and hurt to too many women across the Pacific Islands. For more than three decades gender activists have drawn attention to this issue and successfully argued for improved state responses to arrest this violence. The reforms have been institutionalised but ongoing violence shows they frequently fail. This round table debates findings from a new Oxford University Press book published by Nicole George titled Between Rights and Rightfulness: Regulating gender and violence in the Pacific Islands. The monograph focusses on three Pacific Island case study settings, Fiji, Bougainville and Kanak communities in New Caledonia and seeks to explain why gender violence is insistent in these contexts. The analysis approaches regulation as a scaled ecology and examines how gendered geometries of power operate to shape the terrain of rulemaking and rule taking on gender and gender violence in each site. Through policy analysis and the use of innovative photo-elicitation methods, the study sheds light on where and how geometries of regulatory power produce constraining outcomes for women. Importantly, it also brings to light the regulatory principles and practices operating at a range of scales that enable women in everyday settings to resist these constraints too.