Join us for the book launch of Dr Zeynep Kilicoglu’s Deconstructing Refugee Women’s Empowerment. This new book explores how self-identified feminist or women’s asylum organisations in the United Kingdom and France address refugee women’s empowerment in their operations and how these perpetuate or disrupt global hierarchies. 

Adopting a feminist, intersectional, and postcolonial approach, the book provides a nuanced assessment on how refugee assistance might move beyond the dominant “vulnerability versus empowerment” dichotomy. Acknowledging how some of the current practices still impose vulnerability on women, it aims to contribute to the newly established literature exploring how refugeehood and asylum-seeking are not necessarily disempowering for fleeing women, as they can provide new opportunities for negotiating gender norms, supporting women to practice agency. Building on rich empirical work conducted via semi-structured interviews with refugee women and aid professionals, and participant observation in refugee communities, the  book scrutinises how refugee women’s empowerment is embedded in the histories of colonialism, biopolitics, racism, and patriarchy, which legitimises the boundaries between the West and the rest, and it sheds light on the new strategies created by communities to move beyond these hierarchies, acknowledging women as autonomous actors who do not need to rely on aid  structures.

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Meet our speakers and chair

Dr Yener Bayramoğlu is a media ethnographer and Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. Bayramoğlu’s interdisciplinary work explores the intersection of digital media, migration, queer theory, temporalities and affect. He has investigated how digital media contribute to the formation of queer diaspora across borders while also analysing how social media facilitates the spread of racism and disinformation. He is the author of Queer (In)Visibilities (Transcript Verlag 2018) and the co-author of Post/pandemic Life: A Theory of Fragility (Transcript Verlag 2021) both published in German. He has recently co-edited the special issue Transnational Queer Cultures and Digital Media (2024) for Communication, Culture and Critique.  His work has appeared in journals including Media, Culture & Society and Ethnic & Racial Studies. He has conducted multi-sited and comparative research across Turkey, Germany, and the UK and his work has been supported by grants from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, the German Research Foundation (DFG), and EU-HORIZON.

Prof Ali Bilgic is Professor of International Relations and Middle East Politics at Loughborough University. He serves as the Director of Global Engagement and Research Lead for ‘Challenges to the Public Space and Democracy’ at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities. From 2017 to 2019, he held the Prince Claus Chair (PCC) in Development and Equity at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. As PCC, Ali worked under the theme of Migration and Human Security. He has been actively involved in academic leadership, serving on the Executive Committee of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section of the International Studies Association (2016–2018) and co-convening the British International Studies Association’s Gendering International Relations Working Group (2019–2021). He is an Associate Editor of International Relations and a member of the Editorial Board of Mediterranean Politics. His research interests encompass Middle East politics and international relations, security studies, postcolonial and feminist international relations, emotions in global politics, and trust-building in international relations. He is the author of Rethinking Security in the Age of Migration: Trust and Emancipation in Europe (Routledge, 2013; 2nd edition, 2018) and Turkey, Power and the West (IB Tauris, 2016). He also co-authored The Michigan Guidelines on Refugee Freedom of Movement (2017), which has been recognized as a reference document in the UNHCR's Refworld. His most recent book, Positive Security (co-authored with Prof. Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv), was published by Routledge in 2022.

Prof Clare Hemmings is Professor of Feminist Theory in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics, where she has worked since 1999. Her main interests are histories of queer feminist theories and the development of alternative stories and methods (with a particular focus on archives). She’s the author of Bisexual Spaces (2002), Why Stories Matter (2011) and Considering Emma Goldman (2018), and editor of nine edited volumes and special issues on these themes. Her current project is Feminist Knowledge Struggles: Telling Stories Differently, which develops original queer feminist methodologies to challenge the amenability of gendered and sexual discourses to the Right.

Dr Aiko Holvikivi is Assistant Professor of Gender, Peace and Security at the Department of Gender Studies and an Associate Academic at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, LSE. Her research is interested in transnational movements of knowledges and of people, and how these are produced by and productive of gendered and racialised (in)security. Her first monograph, Fixing Gender: The Paradoxical Politics of Training Peacekeepers (Oxford University Press 2024), interrogates these themes through an examination of the practice of ‘gender training’. This research traces the ways in which training produces knowledge about gender; the processes of circulation, translation, resistance and negotiation that are involved; and the epistemic and political effects of such training. The book draws on fieldwork with military and police peacekeepers in East Africa, the Nordic region, West Africa, the Western Balkans, and Western Europe.

Dr Zeynep Kilicoglu is a dedicated feminist scholar specializing in migration and forced displacement. Her research explores how humanitarian asylum organizations in Western Europe, particularly in the UK and France, construct the identities of refugee women. She is particularly interested in how these actors define and address women’s empowerment within their daily programs, with a focus on the opportunities available for refugee women to assert political authorship, visibility, and agency. She works closely with feminist and queer activist networks and engages directly with refugee and asylum-seeking women from diverse backgrounds. Her epistemological approach is rooted in ethnographic methods, emphasizing the co-creation of academic knowledge in partnership with marginalized communities. She is deeply committed to promoting inclusivity and ensuring active community engagement throughout her research processes. Her research is supported by various institutions, including the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence.