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Book Launch: Women, Peace, and Security in Afghanistan: Resistance and Resilience

Join us online for the launch of the first book to explore the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda in Afghanistan. Authored by Dr Farkhondeh Akbari and Professor Jacqui True, and published by De Gruyter Brill.

This book examines how Afghan women’s activism has reshaped the fight for rights and freedom.Through feminist pragmatist grounded normative theorising, the book makes visible Afghan women’s diverse voices, strategies, and lived realities across war, peace, and politics. From international military interventions and peacemaking deals to current engagement and non-engagement with the Taliban, this book is an urgent call to recognise and support women’s agency in the face of oppression.

A Q&A session will follow, offering attendees the opportunity to engage directly with the authors and panellists.

EVENT DETAILS

DATE: Thursday 4 December 2025
TIME: 7:00 pm (AEST) start, finishing at 8:30pm
DURATION: 90 minutes (incl Q&A)
LOCATION: Online - a link will be emailed to you with the viewing details

PANELLISTS

Dr Farkhondeh Akbari

Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW), Monash University. Farkhondeh holds a Ph.D. in Diplomatic Studies from the Australian National University and an Advanced Master’s in Diplomacy. Her research explores non-state armed actors’ diplomacy, feminist foreign policy, and the Women, Peace and Security agenda in conflict zones. Her doctoral work examined peace negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. A committed activist, she co-founded a grassroots NGO advancing women’s empowerment and inclusive peace in Afghanistan.

Professor Jacqui True

Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW), Monash University. Jacqui is Professor of International Relations and a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). Her research focuses on gendered political violence, feminist political economy, and the Women, Peace and Security agenda. She is the author of Hidden Wars: Gendered Violence in Asia’s Civil Conflicts (2024) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace and Security (2019). In 2021, she was named by Apolitical as one of the top 100 global experts on gender policy for gender-based violence.

Professor Bina D'Costa

Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW), Australian National University. Bina is an ARC Future Fellow and Chief Investigator at CEVAW, and currently serves as a UN Special Procedures Mandate Holder with the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. Her research focuses on displaced children’s protection in global humanitarian emergencies, including trafficking, child marriage, and gender justice. She has worked with UNICEF, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and civil society justice initiatives across Asia. Her books include Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia and Children and the Politics of Violence.

Dr Jasmine Westendorf

Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict, University of Melbourne. Jasmine is Co-Director of the Initiative for Peacebuilding and an ARC DECRA Fellow. Her research focuses on sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. She is the author of Violating Peace: Sex, Aid and Peacekeeping (Cornell University Press, 2020) and co-editor of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peacekeeping and Aid: Critiquing the Past, Plotting the Future (Bristol University Press, 2024).

ABOUT CEVAW

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW) is the world's first Centre to address the full range of forms of violence against women in Australia and the Indo-Pacific region.

Headquartered at Monash University, the CEVAW network comprises 13 Chief Investigators from six Australian universities, and 45 Australian and international partner organisations.

With a $35M investment from the ARC (Australian Research Council), CEVAW is poised to make significant global impact by examining the structural drivers that cause and compound violence against women, and pioneering new, evidence-based approaches to radically improve policy and practice across Australia and the Indo-Pacific.

The Centre mobilises survivor-centric and Indigenous approaches, interdisciplinary collaborations, and Indo-Pacific partnerships to deliver scalable approaches to eliminate violence against women across the legal, security, economic, health, and political systems of Australia and the region.

This Centre is funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council.