Christine Sylvester, Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Lancaster University

Christine Sylvester worked in Centre for Gender and Women's Studies until June 2011.
This page is displayed as a record, please note that the information may be out of date.

Current Teaching

Professor Sylvester was awarded the Swedish Kertin Hesselgren Chair for the 2010-2011 academic year and is based in the School of Global Studies, the University of Gothenburg.

Research Interests

(ISS) in The Hague Netherlands. Before that I was at The Australian National University (1994-2001) and, earlier, at Northern Arizona University. I have had visiting academic positions in Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Finland, Belgium, the UK and at the United Nations University in Tokyo; most recently, I was a visiting professor atthe University of Connecticut. I served as Vice-President of the International Studies Association (USA) in 2004-5 and was Professorial Research Associate at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), from 2004-2006, after spending the previous year there as Leverhulme Professor of International Relations. In addition, I received the Susan S, Northrup Award of the International Studies Association in 2009 and the Swedish Kerstin Hesselgren Chair for 2010-2011,spending that academic year at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg. My research is also the subject of a special panel session of the International Studies Association annual conference in 2011. I sit on the editorial boards of the European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, Alternatives, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Borderlands ejournal, and the Australasian Review of African Studies (among others). I have conducted development-related consultancies in Australia, Netherlands, Thailand, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya and international relations consultancies in Finland, Austria, New Zealand, Korea, and Spain. An American by birth and academic training, I also hold Australian citizenship.

I welcome applications from PhD students exploring feminist questions as they relate to international politics or to IR as an academic field, and also encourage applications from those interested in the history and development of IR or feminist angles on war.

I welcome applications from research students interested in any critical development area, and would especially encourage those who have strong theoretical interests.

I welcome applications from research students of politics/IR who wish to incorporate the arts, humanities, or art institutions into their research, and those trained in the arts or humanities who wish to expand into politics/IR.

Most of my research in international relations has been in the area of feminist IR, a thirty year-plus effort by feminist scholars to influence international relations as a set of practices (e.g., war, diplomacy, terrorism, aid, trade,

etc) and theories (such as realism, liberal institutionalism, international society, international political economy, globalisation, constructivism, security studies, etc). There are two ways into feminist IR: through the formulation of feminist questions as they relate to international relationsand by asking questions typically raised by the field of IR in ways that engage feminist/gender theory and research. My own research works both sides of feminist IR. For example, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Cambridge University Press, 1994) critiques the field of IR from various feminist angles. Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge University Press, 2002) aims at encouraging feminists to think about the international by drawing on the insights of colleagues in IR.

In recognition of my work in feminist IR, I wascommissioned by Routledge to selectthe key works in feminist IR works that have influenced feminist IR writers for a five volume series on Major Works in Feminist IR (due out in Novemer 2010). In2009 I received the Susan S. Northcutt Award by the Women's Caucus of the International Studies Association (ISA) for introducing innovative approaches to the study of international relations, for working to bring women and minorities into the profession, for publications in feminist IR,and for service to the ISA. In 2008 I was listed as one of the fifty key thinkers in the field of international relations in a Routledge book by that title, edited by Martin Griffiths, Steven Roach, and M. Scott Solomon.

Within feminist IR, I have developed the concept of empathetic co-operation as a feminist way to view relations of the international that we could be both practising and studying (see, e.g., "Empathetic Cooperation: A Feminist Method for IR," Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 1994). Relatedly, I have written about the postmodern process of mobile identity or subjectivity required to be in the world without seeking to conquer, control, command, or kill it (see, e.g., "African and Western Feminisms: World-Traveling The Tendencies and Possibilities," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and in Society, 1995).

One of my latest projects in IR has beenTouching War, an interdisciplinary research focus and set of events that I directed at Lancaster University in 2008-09 (funded by IAS, the Department of Politics and International Relations and the Lancaster University Film Society).Working with colleagues from a number of fields--including law, sociology, cultural studies, the arts, English and creative writing, history, educational research, and religious studies --we explored war as a set of physical and emotional experiences that touch all of us, but in varying ways http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/doc_library/politics/touchingwar/programme.ppt.

Experiencing War, which contains a small number of the Touching War papers,was publishedin October 2010 as the first book in a new series I am editing for Routledge on War, Politics, Experience.Another related book in progress is my War,Feminism and IR(Routledge, 2011).

In the area of social and intellectual studies of IR as a field, I have written about IR as a camp structure in "Whither the International at the End of IR?"

Millennium (2007). I also have a book chapter that draws on my interest in art methodologies for IR (see below),an in Security Dialogue (December 2007) on missing interest in women and gender relations in European critical security studies, and a contribution to a roundtable on the history of feminist IR that was held at LSE in 2008 and published in Millennium later that year.

Having worked forten years in overseas development institutes, I view critically the ways development studies usually conceptualises the problems, processes, and outcomes of Third World development. Dominated by various aspects of economics, and by international financial institutions, development studies often operates on the basis of an impoverished image of the "other" as the development recipient. That person is far less complex and multifaceted than her counterparts in developed societies. He or she is someone whose needs are basic or involve elementary human rights and capabilities. If such people are called "women," their humanity often comes down to matters of reproduction, literacy, health, household, and the power relations of men and donors. While understanding the urgency of assistance and the dire conditions that many people face every day -after years doing field research in Africa and development consultancies in Asia and Africa --my concern is to do away with "stick figures"

of the development imaginary and replace these with more humanitarian imaginaries, where people's aspirations above and beyond basic well-being are recognised and enabled.

One way into that problematic is through a consideration of postcolonial writings that often portray local culture and personhood with the finesse and attention to detail they deserve (see, "Development Studies and Postcolonial

Insistent that development studies must incorporate lessons from the humanities, I have critiqued the feminist development expert (someone like myself) for her insufficient poetics ("Development Poetics," Alternatives, 2000). I have looked at parallel migrations -coming to New York to blow up two architectures/leaving the bombers' home countries for Australia -in both development and drama terms ("Global "Development" Dramaturgies/Gender Stagings," Borderlands eJournal, 2003). As well, extended field research on the political economy of women and work in Zimbabwe has prompted my concern with methodologies that address the question Gayatri Spivak raised years ago -can the subaltern speak? I would ask:

what does she see, touch, taste, smell, hear -and dream? (See, Producing Women and Progress in Zimbabwe: Narratives of Identity and Work from the 1980s (Heinemann, 2000). I am currently working on de-development as a strategy of governance, as seen in countries like Zimbabwe today (earlier in Rwanda, Uganda, Liberia, Cambodia) and have written recently about this in terms of "Bare Life as a Development/Postcolonial Problematic," Geographical Journal, 2006,reprinted as the lead chapter in Development in an Insecure and Gendered World, edited by Jacqui Leckie (2009). Another book chapter on "Where's the Progress in Postcolonial Economies" isin Postcolonial Economies,edited by Jane Pollard (2010).

Arts and (International/Development) Politics My work in development overlaps significantly with feminist IR and with research I do on the visual and literary arts and on museums. One might say that each is an instance of the other, which means that studies of, say, war, the Guggenheim Museum, or practices of gender and development could fall under any of the three rubrics (see 2005 article in Millennium, above).

I am very interested in the visual fine arts and art museums as instances of international relations rather than representations of it, and have written in this area since the mid-1990s (see "Picturing the Cold War: An Art Graft/Eye Graft" and "Sur-Real Internationalism: Emigres, Native Sons, and Ethical War Creations," both in Alternatives (1996 and 1999), and "Art, Abstraction, and International Relations" and "The Art of War/The War Question in (Feminist) IR,"

both in Millennium (2001, 2005; also Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey, Cambridge University Press, 2000). My latest pieces are"Bringing Art/Museums to Feminist International Relations," in B. Ackerly, J.

True, and M. Stern, eds., Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2006), "Whither the International At the End of IR?" Millennium (2007) and Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (Paradigm Press, 2009).

Some of my research in international relations also weaves social science fact with the fiction of imaginative literatures (e.g., "Handmaids' Tales of Washington Power," Body and Society, 1998), and much of my work in development studies draws on postcolonial novels and poetry (e.g., ""Progress" in Zimbabwe:

Is "It" a "Woman?"" International Feminist Journal of Politics (1999), "Development Poetics," Alternatives (2000), "Bare Life as a Development/Postcolonial Problematic," Geographical Journal (2006), chapters in Feminist International Relations). In 2008 and 2009 I organised innovative "panels" at the International Studies Association meetings that (per)formed living collages of disparate and unexpected elements of international relations and IR. For the 2010 ISA, I plan to curate an exhibition of ISA member artworks that reflect on international relations. I find the combination of humanities, arts and International Relations and Development cutting edge and very exciting.

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Home About Us People Research Prospective Students Current Students News & Events Contact Us SEARCH this site using Keywords/Tags or Full Text. Go»	Professor Christine Sylvester Christine Sylvester worked in Centre for Gender and Women's Studies until June 2011. This page is displayed as a record, please note that the information may be out of date. Professor of International Relations and Development Degree: PhD International Relations Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research, Feminist Media Studies Research Group Current Teaching Professor Sylvester was awarded the Swedish Kertin Hesselgren Chair for the 2010-2011 academic year and is based in the School of Global Studies, the University of Gothenburg. In the 2011/ 12 academic year Professor Sylvester will be the course convenor forthe postgraduate module PPR.428: Gender, War and Security in International Relations. Research Interests I moved to Lancaster University in 2005 from the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague Netherlands. Before that I was at The Australian National University (1994-2001) and, earlier, at Northern Arizona University. I have had visiting academic positions in Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Finland, Belgium, the UK and at the United Nations University in Tokyo; most recently, I was a visiting professor atthe University of Connecticut. I served as Vice-President of the International Studies Association (USA) in 2004-5 and was Professorial Research Associate at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), from 2004-2006, after spending the previous year there as Leverhulme Professor of International Relations. In addition, I received the Susan S, Northrup Award of the International Studies Association in 2009 and the Swedish Kerstin Hesselgren Chair for 2010-2011,spending that academic year at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg. My research is also the subject of a special panel session of the International Studies Association annual conference in 2011. I sit on the editorial boards of the European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, Alternatives, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Borderlands ejournal, and the Australasian Review of African Studies (among others). I have conducted development-related consultancies in Australia, Netherlands, Thailand, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya and international relations consultancies in Finland, Austria, New Zealand, Korea, and Spain. An American by birth and academic training, I also hold Australian citizenship. Main Areas of Interest International Relations Experiencing War Feminist international relations - theory and methodology the war question for feminism and international relations social and intellectual genealogies of international relations as a field I welcome applications from PhD students exploring feminist questions as they relate to international politics or to IR as an academic field, and also encourage applications from those interested in the history and development of IR or feminist angles on war. Critical Development development theories, themes, practices, and debates the interfaces of development studies and postcolonial studies women/gender/development de-development as a governance strategy I welcome applications from research students interested in any critical development area, and would especially encourage those who have strong theoretical interests. Arts and (International/Development) Politics visual art and museums in international relations art methodologies for politics and international relations development and postcolonial literatures the novels of international relations performance in/and international relations I welcome applications from research students of politics/IR who wish to incorporate the arts, humanities, or art institutions into their research, and those trained in the arts or humanities who wish to expand into politics/IR. My Research International Relations Most of my research in international relations has been in the area of feminist IR, a thirty year-plus effort by feminist scholars to influence international relations as a set of practices (e.g., war, diplomacy, terrorism, aid, trade, etc) and theories (such as realism, liberal institutionalism, international society, international political economy, globalisation, constructivism, security studies, etc). There are two ways into feminist IR: through the formulation of feminist questions as they relate to international relationsand by asking questions typically raised by the field of IR in ways that engage feminist/gender theory and research. My own research works both sides of feminist IR. For example, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Cambridge University Press, 1994) critiques the field of IR from various feminist angles. Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge University Press, 2002) aims at encouraging feminists to think about the international by drawing on the insights of colleagues in IR. In recognition of my work in feminist IR, I wascommissioned by Routledge to selectthe key works in feminist IR works that have influenced feminist IR writers for a five volume series on Major Works in Feminist IR (due out in Novemer 2010). In2009 I received the Susan S. Northcutt Award by the Women's Caucus of the International Studies Association (ISA) for introducing innovative approaches to the study of international relations, for working to bring women and minorities into the profession, for publications in feminist IR,and for service to the ISA. In 2008 I was listed as one of the fifty key thinkers in the field of international relations in a Routledge book by that title, edited by Martin Griffiths, Steven Roach, and M. Scott Solomon. Within feminist IR, I have developed the concept of empathetic co-operation as a feminist way to view relations of the international that we could be both practising and studying (see, e.g., "Empathetic Cooperation: A Feminist Method for IR," Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 1994). Relatedly, I have written about the postmodern process of mobile identity or subjectivity required to be in the world without seeking to conquer, control, command, or kill it (see, e.g., "African and Western Feminisms: World-Traveling The Tendencies and Possibilities," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and in Society, 1995). One of my latest projects in IR has beenTouching War, an interdisciplinary research focus and set of events that I directed at Lancaster University in 2008-09 (funded by IAS, the Department of Politics and International Relations and the Lancaster University Film Society).Working with colleagues from a number of fields--including law, sociology, cultural studies, the arts, English and creative writing, history, educational research, and religious studies --we explored war as a set of physical and emotional experiences that touch all of us, but in varying ways http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/doc_library/politics/touchingwar/programme.ppt. Experiencing War, which contains a small number of the Touching War papers,was publishedin October 2010 as the first book in a new series I am editing for Routledge on War, Politics, Experience.Another related book in progress is my War,Feminism and IR(Routledge, 2011). . In the area of social and intellectual studies of IR as a field, I have written about IR as a camp structure in "Whither the International at the End of IR?" Millennium (2007). I also have a book chapter that draws on my interest in art methodologies for IR (see below),an in Security Dialogue (December 2007) on missing interest in women and gender relations in European critical security studies, and a contribution to a roundtable on the history of feminist IR that was held at LSE in 2008 and published in Millennium later that year. Critical Development Having worked forten years in overseas development institutes, I view critically the ways development studies usually conceptualises the problems, processes, and outcomes of Third World development. Dominated by various aspects of economics, and by international financial institutions, development studies often operates on the basis of an impoverished image of the "other" as the development recipient. That person is far less complex and multifaceted than her counterparts in developed societies. He or she is someone whose needs are basic or involve elementary human rights and capabilities. If such people are called "women," their humanity often comes down to matters of reproduction, literacy, health, household, and the power relations of men and donors. While understanding the urgency of assistance and the dire conditions that many people face every day -after years doing field research in Africa and development consultancies in Asia and Africa --my concern is to do away with "stick figures" of the development imaginary and replace these with more humanitarian imaginaries, where people's aspirations above and beyond basic well-being are recognised and enabled. One way into that problematic is through a consideration of postcolonial writings that often portray local culture and personhood with the finesse and attention to detail they deserve (see, "Development Studies and Postcolonial Studies: Disparate Tales of the "Third World,"" Third World Quarterly, 1999). Insistent that development studies must incorporate lessons from the humanities, I have critiqued the feminist development expert (someone like myself) for her insufficient poetics ("Development Poetics," Alternatives, 2000). I have looked at parallel migrations -coming to New York to blow up two architectures/leaving the bombers' home countries for Australia -in both development and drama terms ("Global "Development" Dramaturgies/Gender Stagings," Borderlands eJournal, 2003). As well, extended field research on the political economy of women and work in Zimbabwe has prompted my concern with methodologies that address the question Gayatri Spivak raised years ago -can the subaltern speak? I would ask: what does she see, touch, taste, smell, hear -and dream? (See, Producing Women and Progress in Zimbabwe: Narratives of Identity and Work from the 1980s (Heinemann, 2000). I am currently working on de-development as a strategy of governance, as seen in countries like Zimbabwe today (earlier in Rwanda, Uganda, Liberia, Cambodia) and have written recently about this in terms of "Bare Life as a Development/Postcolonial Problematic," Geographical Journal, 2006,reprinted as the lead chapter in Development in an Insecure and Gendered World, edited by Jacqui Leckie (2009). Another book chapter on "Where's the Progress in Postcolonial Economies" isin Postcolonial Economies,edited by Jane Pollard (2010). Arts and (International/Development) Politics My work in development overlaps significantly with feminist IR and with research I do on the visual and literary arts and on museums. One might say that each is an instance of the other, which means that studies of, say, war, the Guggenheim Museum, or practices of gender and development could fall under any of the three rubrics (see 2005 article in Millennium, above). I am very interested in the visual fine arts and art museums as instances of international relations rather than representations of it, and have written in this area since the mid-1990s (see "Picturing the Cold War: An Art Graft/Eye Graft" and "Sur-Real Internationalism: Emigres, Native Sons, and Ethical War Creations," both in Alternatives (1996 and 1999), and "Art, Abstraction, and International Relations" and "The Art of War/The War Question in (Feminist) IR," both in Millennium (2001, 2005; also Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey, Cambridge University Press, 2000). My latest pieces are"Bringing Art/Museums to Feminist International Relations," in B. Ackerly, J. True, and M. Stern, eds., Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2006), "Whither the International At the End of IR?" Millennium (2007) and Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (Paradigm Press, 2009). Some of my research in international relations also weaves social science fact with the fiction of imaginative literatures (e.g., "Handmaids' Tales of Washington Power," Body and Society, 1998), and much of my work in development studies draws on postcolonial novels and poetry (e.g., ""Progress" in Zimbabwe: Is "It" a "Woman?"" International Feminist Journal of Politics (1999), "Development Poetics," Alternatives (2000), "Bare Life as a Development/Postcolonial Problematic," Geographical Journal (2006), chapters in Feminist International Relations). In 2008 and 2009 I organised innovative "panels" at the International Studies Association meetings that (per)formed living collages of disparate and unexpected elements of international relations and IR. For the 2010 ISA, I plan to curate an exhibition of ISA member artworks that reflect on international relations. I find the combination of humanities, arts and International Relations and Development cutting edge and very exciting. Associated Keywords: Art, Biopolitics, Feminist perspectives, Feminist research methodologies, International development, International relations, Literature and politics, Museums, Performance, Politics, Visual culture, Zimbabwe View all research activities, ePrints, news and events associated with Christine Sylvester. «Back	View Staff Profiles Centre for Gender and Women's Studies Staff All Faculty Staff Search Faculty by Keyword
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Professor Christine Sylvester

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