Women & War: A Feminist Podcast

Women in regions affected by war and forced displacement are highly visible in media accounts. Yet, their resistance against different forms of violence – from so-called domestic abuse to large-scale state violence – often goes unrecognized. Women & War is a platform to learn about powerful women’s struggles for liberation, justice and peace. The podcast amplifies critical contemporary feminist work in the field of war, violence, colonialism, and forced migration. The invited guests – who are engaged feminist academics and activists - speak about legacies of genocide, femicide, occupation, and invasion in the context of places like Armenia, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Palestine, Pakistan and beyond. In addition to providing background and sharing knowledge, the guests reflect on their own scholarship and discuss contemporary knowledge production on women’s resistance. Together, guest and host counter Orientalist and patriarchal narratives and instead center women’s practices of resistance and collective struggle, past and present. While offering historical context to contemporary wars and conflicts in the region, Women & War seeks to be a space to build transnational feminist solidarity.The podcast is not detached from political events and developments. In fact, recent developments such as the 2021 handover of Afghanistan to the Taliban or the Turkish state’s military operations in three parts of Kurdistan over the last years were among the events that sparked the idea to launch this project. These and other experiences discussed in the episodes illustrate why it is crucial to view gender as a central, rather than secondary question in our understanding of political conflicts.This podcast is hosted by political sociologist Dr Dilar Dirik, Junior Research Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre and Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. This project has been made possible through the University of Oxford's Public Engagement with Research Fund.