Hello!
I am an Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, where I am the Director of the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy. I am also the co-founder and convener of the Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative (IGLI), an effort to catalyze research, education, and programming aimed at elevating and amplifying the work that women-identified and gender non-conforming activists are doing at the grassroots to advance peace, justice, and human rights across the world. I released a podcast as part of IGLI in 2023 — you can check out the first season here.
I’m also a feminist researcher and writer; a believer in justice; a lover of whales and elephants and (especially) basset hounds; a convener of spaces for building solidarity; and a big fan of swimming in oceans.
My research focuses on war, gender, activism, and politics. My first book, War, Women, and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Cambridge University Press 2018), drew from over 260 interviews with women in Rwanda and Bosnia to investigate the impact of violence on women's political mobilization. My second book project, which is nearing completion, is tentatively titled “There Are Things You Cannot Choke in Blood” (a quote from Camus). It features 10 stories of care and creativity from 10 cases of genocide, including stories about the theater scene in Sarajevo during the siege, the power of music in Aleppo, and the importance of cooking to care for displaced Tamil women in Sri Lanka.
This is Penelope June.
Together with Milli Lake (LSE), my current research critically examines women’s empowerment interventions after war. With an incredible feminist collective, we run the Women’s Rights After War (WRAW) Project, which aims to evaluate how women’s empowerment initiatives shape different women’s lives. Through this project, we are also exploring how we can expand our understandings of women’s experiences during and after violence through mediums other than writing — we are in awe of the dancers, singers, and artists that work on these same topics and have so much to teach us. Check out our digital archive here.
