Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Meredith Loken
2023-2024
Home institution
University of Amsterdam
Country of origin (home institution)
Netherlands
Discipline(s)
Information and communication sciences
Political Sciences
Theme(s)
Contemporary violence & Justice
Gender, Family & Youth
Information & media
Fellowship dates
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Biography
I am an Associate Professor (UD1) in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, where I am a board member with the Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS) and a faculty affiliate with the Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies (ACCS).
I research contemporary political violence, specifically focused on the gender dynamics of armed organizations and civil wars. My work explores the causes and effects of women's participation in armed groups, gender-based targeting during conflict, and non-state armed group messaging and narrative-building around political violence. I am presently researching and writing a writing a book about armed group publicity, including the role of women and gendered narratives, in the north of Ireland.
I am co-Principal Investigator for the Women's Activities in Armed Rebellion (WAAR) Project, a multi-methods research project comprising a qualitative handbook and cross-national dataset documenting women’s participation over 370 rebel organisations operating between 1946-2015.
Research Project
Gendering Rebel Legitimacy in Civil War
This project explores the role of gender in politically violent organizations, examining how militant groups leverage gendered narratives and images in their public messaging to shape external perceptions of their movements. Specifically, this project asks how both women’s participation in militant groups and violence targeting women civilians shape militant publicity and propaganda strategies aimed at domestic and international audiences. As such, this approach shifts the analytic lens away from militant organizations’ armed operations and towards their meaning-making activities and reputational concerns. While taking a cross-organizational approach, this project currently focuses in-depth on militant organizations previously active in Northern Ireland.
Research Interests:
Gender and political violence; militant propaganda; women in armed groups; organizational reputation management