Laura’s research interests include gender, feminism and security in post-conflict contexts, in particular ex-Yugoslavia. Much of her focus has been on the United Nations Security Council’s Women, peace and security (WPS) agenda and its implementation within the United Nations system and in post-conflict contexts.

Her current research examines how indicators matter in the implementation and achievement of feminist and gendered goals in international peacebuilding. With funding from the British Academy (2015-17), Laura has explored the United Nations’ women, peace and security indicators alongside other activities intended to quantitatively capture WPS concerns. This investigation highlights how knowledge about gender in peacebuilding is produced and accumulated, uncovering the effects of measurement for the achievement of institutional goals about a gender-just peace, and how these outcomes speak to feminist ambitions.

Laura is collaborating with Dr. Maria O’Reilly (Leeds Beckett University) to develop a feminist intervention and analysis of the concepts, methods and approaches used in the field of critical peacebuilding. From this project, a Special Issue of Peacebuilding ‘Critical Peace and Conflict Studies: Feminist Interventions’ was published in 2019, and an edited volume Feminist Interventions in Critical Peace and Conflict Studies in 2021. 

Previous research.

Laura has also carried out two other research projects. The first involved research on gender presence in peace and constitutional negotiations, specifically focussing on Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was part of the Understanding Institutional Change: A Gender Perspective project (www.manchester.ac.uk/uic). For this project, she explored quantitative data about women, gender and feminism in peace settlements and undertook a gendered analysis of the Bosnian peace process. Research findings have been published in International Studies Quarterly and Journal of International Relations and Development.    

The second research project explored gender security discourse in Serbia, highlighting how the specific configuration of gender security is reliant upon how the past, present and future of post-conflict is thought about. This project paid particular attention to understanding of how and why UN resolutions, in particular UNSCR 1325, are interpreted by activists working on post-conflict gender security initiatives. Laura's first book Gender Politics and Security Discourse, and articles in International Feminist Journal of Politics, Security Dialogue and Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding cover these themes.  

Current students.

Bulbul Prakash - Navigating the intersections: The Impact of UNSCR 1325 on Feminist Peacebuilding in India's three Conflict Zones. 

Declan Penrose - The Space of Encounter Between Feminist Anti-Nuclear Activism and Academia.

Khin Khin Mra -  Gender in Myanmar’s stalled political transition (2011-2024).

Chantal Victoria Bright - Women, Water Security, and Peace in Liberia: An African Ecofeminist Perspective.

Completed students

Qiaochu Zhang - Chinese engagement in norm(ative) contestation regarding the Protection of Civilians (POC), Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and liberal development assistance since the 2000s. (PhD awarded August 2024).

Sofia Doyle - Staff-Student Sexual Violence in the Academy: Everyday Insecurity, Everyday Resistance. (PhD awarded January 2024).

Marion Greziller - Doing Women, Peace and Security in EU civilian CSDP: a community of pratice in the making? (PhD awarded November 2022).

Jennifer Hobbs - Bodily fluids and International Politics: Violence, Resistance, and (in)security (PhD awarded September 2020)

Michanne Steenbergen - Empowerment, Marginalization, and Post-Conflict Security Practices: Female Ex-Combatants in Nepal and Liberia (PhD awarded January 2020).

Laura convenes the MA module Gender, War and Peace; a final year undergraduate course Knowledge Production in Peacebuilding: Practices and Processes; and a second year module,The Politics of (In)Security. She also contributes to the MA module The Graduate Seminar in International Relations.