Dr Harriet Gray
Senior Lecturer

Profile

Biography

Harriet joined the Department as a Lecturer in International Relations in September 2017. Prior to this, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Gothenburg, working on a study of conflict-related sexual violence in the African Great Lakes Region. Harriet completed her PhD at the London School of Economics and Politics Science in 2015, where her thesis focused on domestic violence in the British military community.

Harriet’s research interests fall within the overlapping fields of critical military studies, critical war studies, and feminist IR. Her work has appeared in journals including The British Journal of Politics and International Relations; Security Dialogue; European Journal of International Relations; Review of International Studies; Gender, Place and Culture; and International Feminist Journal of Politics. Harriet is an Associate Editor of the journal Critical Military Studies.

Harriet has an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project Memorialising Sexual Violence 

Twitter @DrHarrietGray

Research

Overview

Harriet’s research focuses primarily on sexual and gender-based violence in military and conflict spaces. Her main interests lie in unpacking the gendered processes through which various harmful acts come to be understood (or, do not come to be understood) as ‘violence,’ as ‘sexual/gender-based violence’ and as ‘conflict-related sexual/gender-based violence’ – and in the political implications of these definitional processes. Her work seeks to draw intra-active connections between multiple forms of violence which are understood to take place at various levels from the intimate to the geopolitical. Harriet has conducted research on domestic violence in the British military, and on multiple forms of GBV in (post)conflict settings in the African Great Lakes region.

Harriet’s current work centres around an ESRC New Investigator Grant funded project looking at the memorialisation of sexual violence across war and peace. The project begins from the assumption that memorialisation is never politically neutral, and analyses its role in feminist politics. It focuses in particular on six memorial projects located across the USA: three dedicated to peacetime sexual violence within the US, and three to the 'comfort women' of the Asia-Pacific War.

Harriet’s broader research interests include gender-based violence; militarism and militarisation; memorialisation; military families; masculinities and vulnerability; the UN’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda; and feminist methodologies in the study of International Relations.

PhD supervision

Harriet is interested in supervising PhD projects focused on conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, memorialisation, military families, gender and militarisation, and/or other topics in feminist critical military studies.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• The Politics of Gender - POL00053I
• Gender, War and Militarism - POL00056H