The Gender Security focus area examines how gendered exclusion, repression, and inequality shape security outcomes in conflict-affected and authoritarian settings. Across all of its research activities, the Lab centres gender equity as a core analytic and institutional principle, advancing women-led scholarship in a field where women’s expertise has long been marginalized.

A central initiative within this focus area is the Afghan Women’s Fellowship Program at Massey College. Established in response to the Taliban’s ban on women’s education, the Fellowship supports Afghan women scholars whose academic trajectories have been forcibly disrupted. Through a year-long, fully remote research program, fellows develop and publish original research under structured faculty and peer mentorship, while participating in skills development and community-building activities designed to counter academic isolation.

By preserving scholarly identity, producing public knowledge, and sustaining intellectual networks under conditions of extreme repression, this work reframes gender security as a matter of intellectual survival, resilience, and long-term human security