Speaker: Professor Inger Skjelsbæk, University of Oslo

Chair: Professor Marsha Henry, Queen’s University Belfast

This talk will focus on research and preliminary findings from a Consolidator Grant project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) entitled EuroWARCHILD.

This is the first research project to comprehensively examine different groups of war children in the European context; across different conflicts, security settings and generations.   The focus is on Norway, Denmark, Germany and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Professor Inger Skjelsbæk

Inger Skjelsbæk is a psychologist and Professor at the University of Oslo where she is affiliated with the Center for Gender Research and the Center for Research on Extremism.   She is also Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Inger is a Visiting Scholar with us.

Skjelsbæk’s research has focused on gender, political violence, norm development, nation branding, transitional justice, gender and armed forces, the WPS agenda and Bosnia and Herzegovina.   She is the author of  The Political Psychology of War Rape | Studies from Bosnia and Herzego  and Backlash Against the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Contesting Gender Norms | Springer Nature Link .   Having worked on sensitive issues she has also written about  researchers’ well-being Studying conflict-related sexual violence: What does it mean for researchers’ well-being? - Michele Leiby, Inger Skjelsbæk, Kim Thuy Seelinger, 2025.

She has been guest scholar at UC Berkeley (Human Rights Center) and at LSE (Centre for Women, Peace and Security).   Skjelsbæk is a member of The Ethical Council for the Defence Sector in Norway, and she is a deputy member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Read more and find links to publications here: Inger Skjelsbæk - Centre for Gender Research and here: Inger Skjelsbæk – PRIO Centre on Gender, Peace and Security.

Professor Marsha Henry

Marsha Henry is the Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women, Peace, Security and Justice.

Marsha’s research is concerned with the gendered and racialised politics of violence; militarisation; global south development; international aid and intervention; and conflict, peace and security.   She has published on the challenges of decolonial, intersectional, and feminist qualitative approaches, methodologies and fieldwork.

She is the author of several books, the latest of which is: The End of Peacekeeping:  Gender, Race and the Martial Politics of Intervention (Penn Press 2024).

She is currently Associate Editor for Security Dialogue and has helped to develop a range of courses on gender, peace and security at the GEST Programme, University of Iceland, Iceland; UNITAR, Switzerland; and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeper Training Centre, Ghana.

Marsha has also advised several national governments on women’s participation in the armed forces, combatting sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian settings, and developing anti-racist and diversity strategies in foreign policy ministries.