Elizabeth’s research focuses on the relationship between gender and war: how does gender matter for war? How is gender constructed by war, how does it help to uphold the powers that continue to create war? How does gender work with other systems of power, namely race, ethnicity, and religion, to bring individuals into systems of violence in the name of humanitarianism, women’s empowerment, or gender equality? Invested in the material, affective and performative enactments of gender within theaters of war or zones of (in)security, Elizabeth is invested in how subjects are produced by, negotiate with, and hold the power to subvert regimes of military power.
Elizabeth’s research explores the intersection of gender and war, examining how gender influences and is shaped by conflict, its role in sustaining conflict dynamics, and its interaction with other power structures like race, ethnicity, and religion in mobilizing individuals for violence in the name of humanitarianism, women’s empowerment, or gender equality. She is particularly interested in the tangible, emotional, and performative aspects of gender within war contexts and how individuals are both shaped by and resist military power structures.
Her doctoral research focused on the transformations in liberal individualism in the postwar era which, in collaboration with a colorblind, equal-opportunity model of U.S. militarism, led to the unprecedented service of women in Iraq and Afghanistan as counterinsurgents. This research is currently being revised and updated in her book, Gender is a Weapon.
As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, Elizabeth focused on sexual violence in the U.S. military, which occurs against both women and men, as a mode of gender policing and as an integral, rather than abject, component of militarism.
In Switzerland, Elizabeth conducted research on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (UNSCR 1325) and notably, its intersection with the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) agenda, the Obama administration’s non-kinetic antidote to the global war on terror, promulgated by the United Nations into a global security architecture and a burgeoning prevention industry. This research has been circulated in foreign policy circles and has impacted the way that governments conceptualize violent extremism.
The P/CVE agenda is also the topic of her ongoing research project, “Gendered Security Strategies,” (link) which is a critical feminist ethnographic research study focused on the P/CVE agenda in Kenya, with broader explorations in additional contexts including the U.S., Somalia, and Bangladesh.
Her next research project, awaiting funding for 2025-2030, will focus on women and gender in counterinsurgencies and peace operations, and the dangerous overlaps there within.