Women’s health is and always has been hijacked for political ends. The US Supreme Court overturning of Roe vs Wade is but another example of elites using the needless death of women to further their own political advantage. In this year’s Fred Halliday lecture, Sophie Harman seeks to answer two fundamental questions: first, why do women die when they don’t have to? and second, what happens when we take the relationship between women’s health and global politics seriously?
To answer these two questions, Harman will map key trends in how women’s health is used and abused for political advantage around the world; and offer a key provocation, that these trends are fundamental to understanding, and even predicting, the chaos and crisis the world finds itself in. Women and women’s health saw it coming.
Meet our speakers and chair
Sophie Harman () is Professor of International Politics with a specific interest in global health, African Agency, film and visual methods, and gender politics. She was awarded the Joni Lovenduski Prize for outstanding professional achievement by a mid-career scholar by the Political Science Association (PSA) in 2018, the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2018, and nominated for the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer in 2019 for her feature film Pili.
Marsha Henry () is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Marsha’s research interests focus on critical military and peacekeeping studies; the political economy of sexual violence in postconflict settings; and intersectional feminist theories and methodologies. She has published in journals including: Globalizations, Security Dialogue and International Peacekeeping.
William A Callahan is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His essay The Politics of Walls: Barriers, Flows and the Sublime won the Review of International Studies best article (2018). Sensible Politics: Visualizing International Relations, the first book-length analysis of visuality, multisensory politics, and IR, was published by Oxford University Press in February 2020.
More about this event
The Department of International Relations () at 杏吧论坛 is now in it's 95th year - one of the oldest as well as largest IR departments in the world, with a truly international reputation. We are ranked 2nd in the UK and 4th in the world in the QS World University Ranking by Subject 2022 tables for Politics and International Studies.
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Podcast & Video
A podcast of this event is available to download from Hijacking Women's Health.
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