Marking the 25th anniversary of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda in 2025, this lecture examines the integration of feminist perspectives into international security. It explores feminist critiques of traditional security paradigms and analyzes discursive strategies in United Nations debates, highlighting the dominance of instrumentalist arguments and their limitations. Emphasizing the need to prioritize rights-based and transformative approaches, the talk invites scholars and policymakers to reflect on the future of feminism in international security and its potential to reshape global governance.
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Karolin Tuncel is a DPhil candidate at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID), investigating everyday negotiations of gender norms among young couples in Turkey. Her project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Alongside her doctoral research, Karolin has been holding several teaching positions at the University of Oxford. Before starting her DPhil research, Karolin worked as a Carlo Schmid Fellow with the UN Liaison Office for Peace and Security (UNLOPS) in Brussels. Previously, she gained work experience at the Global Public Policy Institute, the German Embassy in Canada, and the Administration of the German Bundestag, among others. As scholar of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Karolin studied Political Science and International Relations in Berlin (BA), Cairo, Reims, and Cambridge (MPhil with Distinction).