Although the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) was established in 1959 it was only in the early 1990s that gender research appeared more firmly on PRIO’s research agenda. Since then the gender research portfolio has gradually expanded. Today PRIO’s Gender Research Group counts 20 members (including MA and doctoral students), spanning a wide variety of topics, disciplines, and methodological approaches. With last year’s establishment of the PRIO Centre on Gender, Peace and Security, PRIO has become the leading scholarly milieu in Norway (and internationally) on gender, peace and conflict research. In her presentation Centre Director Torunn L. Tryggestad will talk about how and why gender research has become so prominent at PRIO. She will address how PRIO has successfully managed to balance research and academic publishing with teaching, training and policy impact. To demonstrate this balance, Tryggestad will explore her own work on the gendered impact of the UN peacebuilding architecture.

Bio:

Torunn L. Tryggestad is a Senior Researcher and director of the PRIO Centre on Gender, Peace and Security. She holds a PhD in Political Science (University of Oslo) on the topic “International Norms and Political Change: ‘Women, Peace and Security’ and the UN Security Agenda”. She has a particular interest in the UN and the gendered dimensions of conflict resolution, conflict management and peacebuilding. She has extensive experience from teaching, training, and providing policy advice to Norwegian ministries, the Norwegian Armed Forces, and the justice sector. In recent years, she has also been centrally involved in conducting the High-Level Seminars on Gender and Inclusive Mediation Processes, in cooperation with the UN Department of Political Affairs and the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI). She was one of the principal authors of the Norwegian Government’s first National Action Plan on the Implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (2006). In 2015 Tryggestad was appointed member of the UN Secretary General’s fourth UN Peacebuilding Advisory Group for the period 2015-2016. She was recently appointed member of the Core Group of the NATO Civil Society Advisory Panel on Women, Peace and Security (2016-2017).    

Contact:

Torunn L. Tryggestad, Senior Researcher. Director of the PRIO Centre on Gender, Peace and Security