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Maria Stern

Professor

School of Global Studies
Telephone
+46 31-786 46 76
Mail
maria.stern@globalstudies.gu.se
Fax
+46 31-786 49 10
Visiting address
Konstepidemins väg 2
41314 Göteborg
Room number
E408b
Postal address
Box 700
40530 Göteborg

About Maria Stern

I am Professor in Peace and Development Studies at the School of Global Studies (SGS). I hold a B.A. in Political Science (Cornell University, USA) and a Ph.D. in Peace and Development Studies from the University of Gothenburg.

My work focuses on the question of violence in relation to security, warring, militarism, development, peace, identity and belonging, coloniality and sex. I explore these subjects through a feminist lens that seeks to recognize intersecting relations of power, and that is attuned to the politics of methodology. I have published in a variety of journals and publishing houses, enjoy the collaborative process of co-authorship, and have served as editor/associate editor at Security Dialogue for many years.

Research Interests

My research interests are in global politics/ International Relations widely defined, including feminist theory, critical security studies, critical war and military studies, the sociology and politics of violence, connections between security, development and peace, International Political Sociology, Post Colonial theory, and qualitative methodology and methods.

My current research projects include (in order of most recent to least recent):

“Prepping’ for Security in Sweden?” , funded by the Swedish Research Council. The research team includes: Maria Stern PI (GU), Richard Georgi (GU), Bart Klem (GU), Christine Agius (Swinburne University of Technology, Australien), Anja Frank (GU), Richard Georgi (GU), Simon Turner (Lund University).

During the Covid pandemic, people in Sweden and around the world not only hoarded food and essential items, they also took 'prepping' courses, joined self-declared survivalist groups, and consumed 'prepping' merchandise in record numbers. Since then, concerns about imminent disasters did not abate, but spread widely, also in part encouraged by the state. ‘Prepping’, broadly understood as the practice by which the anticipation of calamity prompts individuals and communities to prepare ways to mitigate or adapt to insecurity, has moved to the center of debates around societal security and preparedness, but thus far received comparatively little scholarly attention. Focusing on the Swedish context, marked by an active prepper scene amid multiple scenarios of insecurity, our project aims to understand the phenomenon of prepping and what it tells us about how societal security and preparedness are being imagined and practiced, and by whom. Based on a multi-method, qualitative design, we trace historical developments, map out the diversity of the prepping boom in Sweden, and study four different types of prepping practices in-depth. By taking the perspectives of preppers seriously, we inquire into the identities and motivations, ideologies, threat scenarios and anticipated futures that drive the contemporary prepping boom. The insights of our research are not only relevant for scholarship in Sweden and beyond, but also support closing an information gap for security policies.

Sex, Violence, Sexual Violence? Interrogating Lines of Distinction in War and Peace” , funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbanken) Sweden. The research team includes: Maria Stern (PI) (GU), Maria Eriksson Baaz, Swedish National Defense College/ University of Uppsala, Sara Stendahl (GU), and with Susanne Aldén (Linköping University).

Sexual violence (SV) occurs in both peace and war. Yet, there are both tacit and explicit understandings in scholarship, policy and in jurisprudence that conflict-related SV (CRSV) and SV in peacetime settings differ significantly. In peacetime, the absence of consent determines when violence has occurred, who has been harmed and how, and who shall be held accountable. By contrast, war is seen as a ‘coercive environment’ in which consensual sexual relations between enemy combatants and civilians are impossible. Yet, there are many ’grey zones’ that problematize clear divisions between war and peace, coercion and consent, violence and sex. This project bridges scholarship on SV addressing peacetime settings with scholarship on CRSV and continuums of violence by exploring how lines of distinction between sex/violence are being drawn in different sites. It asks: how is SV delineated from sex in contemporary legal and everyday settings that span both peace and wartime? To answer this, we will: 1) analyze legal texts in Sweden, the DR Congo as well as International Law 2) explore two ‘grey zones’, one in a peacetime and one in a ‘wartime’ setting, in which the lived experiences of people problematize tidy distinctions between sex and violence: people who practice BDSM in Sweden (peace); civilians who have sexual relations with ’enemy’ combatants in the DRC (war). Ultimately, the project aims to contribute to better recognizing and preventing the harms of SV—in both war and peace.

“Building ‘Graveyard Peace’? An inside-out perspective on the violent legacies of five years of peacebuilding in Colombia.” (PI), funded by the Swedish Research Council. The research team includes: Maria Stern (PI) (GU), Richard Georgi (GU), Bart Klem (GU), Miguel Baretto Henriquez (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia).

The building of peace, ideally, should be a means for ending violence. Yet, the current Colombian peace process is only the most recent example of how peacebuilding projects—even context-sensitive, inclusive, and homegrown ones—occur not only amidst violence, but are also deeply entangled in, or productive of, continuing violence. We draw on the Colombian case to better understand this fundamental aspect of the lingering crisis of peacebuilding as it plays out on the ground in the institutionalized and granular practice of building peace. Our project aims to analyse how and why peacebuilding has itself become a conflict dynamic through exploring the question: how and why have Colombian peacebuilding interventions aggravated societal conflicts and spurred political violence? We adopt an ‘inside-out’ perspective, tapping the experiences of peacebuilders who have worked in, or in close cooperation with the institutional infrastructure designed by the 2016 peace agreement. Taking the wealth of knowledge, experience, and insight of Colombian peace professionals as its central vantage point, this project produces backstage insights into how a peace drawn on paper is practiced, and how these practices may produce unintended, conflict-aggravating effects. The insights of our research collaborators, largely absent from the reports of monitoring research institutions, also build the foundation of a wider dialogue that we facilitate among peacebuilding experts in the Global South.

“The essential dilemmas of long-term peacebuilding: the cases of Cambodia and Mozambique.” funded by the Swedish Research Council. The research team includes: Joakim Öjendal (PI) (GU), Maria Stern (GU), Adriano Malache (PhD Student, GU).

The aim of this project is to pursue in-depth research of two well-documented and “successful” cases and thus both address the long-term effects of intensive peacebuilding and identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities in its implementation. It will contribute explicitly to the contemporary shift in peacebuilding policy towards a more contextual, human-oriented, and inclusive approach that takes into account the lessons learned regarding the long-term processes instigated by peacebuilding interventions. The project, therefore, interrogates the trajectory of peacebuilding through a historical analysis as well as a contemporary one. Our central research problem is: What, given the long trajectory of peacebuilding initiatives and their implementation, does not work and why in Cambodia and Mozambique? We focus on these two cases because there has been a curiously similar development and timing in the two cases. In both sites, we will seek to identify the provenance of the recent tensions (which are jeopardising peace and stability). Particular research questions are theoretically and conceptually driven. They focus on long-term dilemmas of peacebuilding; the dynamics of ex/inclusion; the significance of grounding peace with the population; and, the possibility of adaptive peacebuilding.

“Sexual Violence Along the War-Peace Continuum.” funded by the Swedish Research Council. The research team includes: Swati Parashar (PI) (GU), Maria Eriksson Baaz, Swedish National Defense College/ University of Uppsala, Maria Stern (GU).

Despite the well-established notion that sexual and gender-based violence runs along a continuum, there is little empirically based scholarship that explores how peacetime rape and wartime rape differ and/or are similar. Does it matter to the ways we understand, prevent and redress the harms of rape that some occur in zones of relative peace, and some in zones of active armed conflict? Indeed, there has been a marked divergence in the explanatory frames for explaining rape in peacetime in relation to wartime rape among scholars and advocates alike. In this project, we address this question through in-depth studies of the forms, contexts and logics of sexual violence in four different sites, two of which are clearly deeply entrenched warzones (Uvira Provence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kashmir, in India) and two that are characterized by long-time peaceful relations and the lack of armed conflict (Mai-Ndombe in the DRC and South Delhi, India). Drawing on the uniquely grounded experience of the investigators, the project will thus produce novel insights on the continuum and non-continuum of sexual violence between war and peace. In addition to providing original empirical data on how the forms, contexts and logics of sexual violence differ and converge by collecting original data in two countries (the DRC and India), it also seeks to enhance our understanding of the frames that limits our abilities/willingness to note and address continuances of violence.

Teaching and Advising

I enjoy over thirty years experience in teaching, and have taught and advised extensively at all levels of education (B.A, Masters and PhD). Most of my teaching has been in International Relations, however I have also taught in Peace and Development Studies more broadly, Global Studies, Global Development Studies, Political Science, and Gender Studies. I have taught in Spain, Rwanda, and Norway. I have been involved in developing school-wide methods and research design courses at all levels of education. I have also worked extensively in course curriculum and program development at all levels of education, Most recently I co-directed the development and establishment of a three-year international Bachelor’s Program in International Relations (in English), which was successfully launched at GU in 2021.