Writing and researching Palestine: reflections on positionality and decoloniality

Speaker: Dr Yara Hawari (Al-Shabaka)

8 June 2022

Public Seminar Series, Trinity term 2022: 'Resistance, Justice, Liberation: Critical Approaches to Knowledge Production on War, Violence and Colonization'

Series convenor: Dr Dilar Dirik (Joyce Pearce Junior Research Fellow)

About the Seminar
In this seminar, we draw on the findings from our report From Converging Roads to Narrowing Grounds: The Struggle for Peace by LGBTI+ and Women’s Organizations in Turkey, published by DEMOS Research Association. We examine the understandings and peace activism of LGBTI+ and women’s organisations that fight for peace in Turkey by centring on the 2013-2015 peace process. Through in-depth interviews with participants from various LGBTI+ and women’s organisations that undertook peace-related activities surrounding the peace process, we take a closer look at the experiences of organisations with a gender focus in the peace struggle. We discuss certain concepts we find significant in terms of the relationship between gender and peace and aim to leave a record for potential processes in the future by looking at the period when the hope for peace was the strongest through the eyes of grassroots actors.