Cynthia Enloe to give #BISA2025 public lecture in Belfast

With just 10 days to go until submission closes for the #BISA2025 50th anniversary conference, we are excited to reveal that the conference will commence with a public lecture given by Professor Cynthia Enloe (Clark University) on the evening of Tuesday 17 June 2025. The title of Professor Enloe’s lecture will be ‘What feminists reveal when they investigate masculinities: The case of military 'manpower'’.

The public lecture is co-sponsored by the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice and the Centre for Gender in Politics. Professor Marsha Henry will be chairing the lecture.

Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor in the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice, with affiliations in Women’s and Gender Studies and Political Science, all at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Her career has included Fulbrights in Malaysia and Guyana, guest professorships in Japan, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland, as well as The Middlebrook/Djerassi Visiting Professor of Gender Studies at University of Cambridge, UK. She has presented lectures across the globe and her writings have been translated into several languages. She has published in Ms. Magazine and The Village Voice, and appeared on National Public Radio, Al Jazeera, C-Span and the BBC.

Professor Enloe’s feminist teaching and research explore gendered politics nationally and internationally, with special attention to how women’s labor is made cheap in globalised factories (especially sneaker factories) and how women’s emotional and physical labor is used by governments to support their war-waging policies—and how diverse women have tried to resist each of these efforts. Racial, class, sexual, ethnic and national identity dynamics, as well as ideas about femininities and masculinities, are common threads throughout her studies.

Cynthia’s fifteen books include her newest: Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (London: Footnote Press; Berkeley: University of California Press) 2023. She is a multi-award-winning scholar, and in 2017 was selected as one of the Honorees named on the Gender Justice Legacy Wall, installed in The Hague at the International Crimes Court.

The lecture will take place at Queen’s University Belfast, and all are welcome - whether or not attending the BISA conference. The lecture will also be open to the public. Further details will be released, and registration open, in 2025.

At the BISA conference you can join a dynamic community of specialists from around the world to discuss, debate, and advance the field of international studies. Taking place in Belfast from 18-20 June 2025, it will include: 

• Three days of inspiring, provocative and diverse panels and roundtables
• A keynote from Professor Roland Bleiker
• Conference reception at Titanic Belfast
• A roundtable on Gender, Peace and Security with members of the NI Women’s Coalition and feminist activists
• Social programme including a Postgraduate Network drinks and pizza evening, and an early-morning Belfast run.

Abstract, panel and roundtable submissions are open now until 14 November.