OAR@UM Community: Previously known as Department of Gender Studies

Lingering colonialism in the women peace and security agenda

2026-05-28T13:56:26Z

Title: Lingering colonialism in the women peace and security agenda Abstract: This paper will examine the persistent colonial legacies embedded within the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda and argues that its continued Eurocentric orientation undermines its legitimacy, effectiveness, and acceptance in the Global South. While WPS was conceived as a transformative framework for advancing gender-responsive peace and security, its implementation remains shaped by institutions, funding structures, and policy approaches rooted in eurocentric epistemologies. These dynamics often position women as a homogenous category, overlook diverse intersectional experiences, and can reproduce unequal power relations between "designers" and "recipients" of WPS interventions. As a result, many actors in the Global South perceive WPS as externally imposed and insufficiently responsive to their diverse sociopolitical realities, thus leading to a failure of WPS implementation programming.; Rather than proposing to place or shift blame on one actor, this paper applies existing feminist and decolonial scholarship to illuminate these tensions and offer constructive pathways forward. Drawing on Charlesworth, Chinkin, and Wright's feminist approaches to international law, Pinto and Nash's analysis of feminism's "bad objects," and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) articulated by Mutua and Anghie, the paper identifies how well-intentioned WPS actors may inadvertently perpetuate the very structures they seek to dismantle. The analysis situates these critiques within the broader context of EU policy and examines the European Council as a case study to demonstrate how institutional practices can reinforce or challenge colonial patterns in WPS implementation. At a time when more than 600 million women and girls are affected by conflict, a 50 percent increase in a decade, reframing WPS through decolonial, feminist, and TWAIL-informed perspectives is both urgent and necessary. This paper argues for an inclusive, context-driven, and cocreative approach to Euro-Arab cooperation that elevates Global South and Indigenous contributions, ultimately strengthening the transformative potential of the WPS agenda.

"A place to be ourselves" : a qualitative exploration of identity, community, and safety for LGBTIQ+ amateur athletes at European sport events

2026-05-28T13:51:48Z

Title: "A place to be ourselves" : a qualitative exploration of identity, community, and safety for LGBTIQ+ amateur athletes at European sport events Abstract: Mainstream sport environments are often characterized by pervasive heteronormativity and cisnormativity, creating barriers for LGBTIQ+ individuals (Gil-Quintana et al., 2022; Lahti et al., 2024; Pride Sports, 2016; Outsport, 2020). Major LGBTIQ+ sport events like the Eurogames and Gay Games function as crucial "alternative spaces" designed to be inclusive (Smiler et al., 2021). However, there is a research gap concerning the in-depth, lived experiences and identity management of the diverse amateur athletes who attend (European Travel Commission, 2018; Kauhanen, 2015; Smiler et al., 2021). This study addresses this gap through a qualitative exploration of these athletes' tourism experiences. Adopting an interpretivist paradigm, this research aims to explore the lived experiences of LGBTIQ+ amateur athletes, focusing on perceptions of safety, inclusivity, and community formation (cf. Smiler et al., 2021). It also seeks to analyze how participation influences their "identity work" and self-expression (Lahti et al., 2024; Smiler et al., 2021). The methodology involves semi- structured interviews conducted with a purposive sample of athletes from various European countries , ensuring representation across the LGBTIQ+ spectrum, a group often under- represented in research (European Travel Commission, 2018; Gil-Quintana et al., 2022). Data will be analyzed using thematic analysis and narrative analysis (Lahti et al., 2024) to understand how athletes construct their identities and experiences in this unique context. This study will provide rich, nuanced insights into the transformative potential of these events, highlighting their role in fostering community and enabling authentic self-expression (Smiler et al., 2021). Findings will inform actionable recommendations for event organizers and tourism stakeholders to improve inclusivity , moving beyond tokenism to create genuinely affirming environments (cf. Molinie, n.d.; Gil-Quintana et al., 2022).

Victims of political violence ; recognition of harm

2026-05-28T13:30:13Z

Title: Victims of political violence ; recognition of harm Abstract: Victims of political violence have increasingly become a central focus in scholarship on peace processes, cycles of violence, and the broader societal impacts of conflict. Beyond immediate harm to individuals, political violence reshapes communities, institutions, and collective memory. This paper argues that both the experience of victimhood and the legal and socio-legal responses to political violence are profoundly gendered processes.; Focusing on key gendered dimensions of victimhood, the paper examines how

Same-sex families perceptions on (in)equality and legal frameworks in Greece

2026-05-28T13:05:21Z

Title: Same-sex families perceptions on (in)equality and legal frameworks in Greece Abstract: In this paper, Greece is considered as a case study, a Balkan country-nation that holds strong values for sexuality and gender, yet voted for same-sex marriage at the end of 2024. In Greece, when policies attempt to legislate or regulate family relations that, on a theoretical level, question the hegemony of the biologically or genetically determined heteropatriarchal 'blood ties' (as same-sex families do in the social imaginary in Greece), a notable intensification of the essentialist attitudes towards kinship and parenthood is emerging. Those attitudes attempt to defend the dominance of 'traditional' and 'official' cultural conceptualisations of the family. The relationship between gender, parenthood, and kinship takes on socio-emotional standards rather than biological connotations, and becomes a field of conflict, negotiation, and multiple ways of kinship (Kantsa, 2015:370).; In 2024, 60% of the population supported same-sex marriage, whereas only 35.8% endorsed the right of same-sex couples to adopt. Society often does not accept gays and lesbians as parents. This can make them feel isolated and lonely in the future. Because kinship is tied to procreation, in the majority's opinion, pink families cannot be sexually productive and are set apart from the rest of humanity because they choose not to accept heteronormativity (Weston, 1991).; To inquire about the qualitative interaction between institutional change and social acceptance, the paper explores how same-sex families (gay and lesbian parents/couples) perceive societal reactions/acceptance of Law 4356/2015 on the extension of the Civil Partnership Act for same-sex couples; whether institutional changes of 2015 affected the societal reactions/acceptance (RQ1). Moreover, the paper further questions the terms under which the legal recognition of the same sex family and kinship is defined. Does law foresee the differentiated characteristics of queer kinship or normalise the queer forms of livelihood and kinship?