Understanding women’s roles as active leaders, peacebuilders, recruiters, refugees, organizers, and even violent insurgents demands a redefinition of what it means to be "woman" in conflict zones.
The Women in Conflict Project employs women’s uncensored stories of meaning and moral complexity from conflict zones to explore the complexity of being “woman” in these settings. This joint research and advocacy initiative demands a reimagining of women as active participants in conflict. Active in ways that reinforced women’s traditional gender roles of caregiver and peacebuilder, and active in ways that counter gender roles - violent combatants for example - and that we therefore find deeply unsettling.
The Women in Conflict podcast is one part of the overall project and features 20-30 minute audio interviews with women from across the globe. Learn more about our podcast.
Our Team
Jillian J. Foster
Jillian J. Foster's, Founder of the Women in Conflict Project, research sits at the nexus of political violence, political behavior, and gender. She is a founding member and principal researcher with the Consortium for Research on Violent Extremism in Africa and a doctoral student in Yale University's Department of Political Science.
Jillian is also the founder of Global Insight, a research, data, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) consultancy specializing in the use of data-driven and gender-sensitive methods in fragile states. Over the past decade, she led Global Insight's portfolio of gender-based violence, peacebuilding/conflict, and humanitarian projects, working with UNHCR, UN Women, Save the Children, the UN Trust Fund, the International Rescue Committee, and countless other INGOs.
You can often find Jillian in the field conducting interviews or leading teams of data collectors, and you can hear her voice as the host of the Women in Conflict podcast.