My research engaging the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda explores the implications of violence against women around borders and conflicts for international peace and security. My recent edited volume (Gender, Conflict, Peace, and Security, Lexington, 2018), gathers a variety of chapters which together demonstrate the level of entrenchment of patriarchy across human social conduct, and the myriad links between that patriarchy and conflict-related violences. My chapter, addressing Security Council Resolution 1325’s difficulty adapting to cultural contexts generally and the Kashmiri context specifically, contends that the nuances of sexual and gender-based violences in different conflicts need to be addressed by context-specific policy measures.
My next project in this research area brings this argument about context and peace together with my previous work on the variety of forms of violence against women. The book project, tentatively titled What is Delhi Afraid of?, looks at the relationship between patriarchy, state, society, and rape. Inspired by the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder of a young woman, I am interested in exploring sexual and gender-based violence in times of ‘peace’ and its implications for what the concept of peace really means. Centered around India as a case study, and built around a combination of ethnographic and analytical work, the book explores the lack of peacefulness in ‘peacetime’ atmospheres of patriarchal sexual and gender-based violence.