Resistance Studies

klang December 7th, 2006

The Resistance Studies Network (RSN) consists of more than 150 scholars around the world (as of May 2008), some which are known and established resistance researchers, e.g. Kathy Ferguson, Michael Hardt, George Katsiaficas, Jenny Pickerill, Paul Routledge and James Scott. Some of the members who are coordinating the network or have agreed to make their membership public are presented below. Other members are reachable through the mailing list.

• -Palestinian Liberation Struggles: Sulaiman Ahamri is a Palestinian from Bethlehem city. He holds a Master’s Degree in American Studies from the University of Jerusalem and a BA degree in social work and psychology from the University of Bethlehem. Ahamri joined the Palestinian national movement for the establishment of a Palestinian state in 1982 and was arrested by Israeli authorities and spent four years in military prisons. He is one of founding members of the peace organisation Combatants for Peace which consists of ex-soldiers and prisoners from both Israel and Palestine.
• -Linus Andersson,is a PhD-student in Media and Communication studies at the Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS) at Södertörn UC. His thesis-project concerns alternative media, with focus on experimental television production between art and media programming. Research interests involve media and social change, the concept of resistance in cultural theory and alternative media. linus.andersson@sh.se
• -Alenka Bartulovic (1981),is a PhD candidate and assistant lecturer at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. Her current research is on identification processes and (counter)discursive practices of antinationalism in Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina) and in the transnational Bosnian community in Ljubljana.E-mail: alenka.bartulovic@ff.uni-lj.si
• -Dr. Colm Breathnach I completed my PhD at the Department of Geography, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland in 2006 on ‘An Historical Geography of Social Class in Early Nineteenth Century Dun Laoghaire’. The focus of my thesis was the formation of new working class communities in the south east of County Dublin, Ireland, associated with the construction of a large harbour in that district in the early 19th century. Much of my research was concentrated on the forms of overt and everyday resistance engaged in by working people in those communities. My current research interests are: geographies of resistance, historical geographies of social class and labour geographies. I have devised and currently teach a 3/4th year advanced option class entitled: ‘Space, Resistance and Power’. I have a lifelong involvement in emancipatory activism. I was a founding member of the Dun Laoghaire Housing Action Campaign in the 1980s and more recently an activist in the Dublin Anti-Bin Tax Campaign in 2003-2005. I have also been involved in various solidarity campaigns relating to East Timor, Palestine and Bosnia over the years. I spent two months during 2002 in Palestine/Israel as a member of the International Solidarity Movement working with Palestinian community organisations as a human rights monitor and assisting in the implementation of non-violent resistance strategies against the Israeli occupation.Contact:Dr. Colm Breathnach, Teaching Fellow, Department of Geography and Sociology, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Contacts: Phone: +44 (0) 141 548 2216, email: colm.breathnach@strath.ac.uk
• -Gavin Brown,is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Leicester. He is particularly interested in prefigurative spaces and has published several analyses of radical queer autonomous spaces in the UK and contintental Europe in which he has participated in numerous ways. Resulting from this work he has recently embarked on a participatory research project examining the diverse economic practices of queer folk in the UK, to consider the numerous ways in which they meet their everyday needs beyond the hyper-consumption spaces of the mainstream lesbian and gay scene. He will be interested to see what patterns of interdependence this research reveals and how these relationships extend across the boundaries of normative identity categories. His queer instincts leave him suspicious of normative tendencies in activist organising. With Jenny Pickerill he is currently editing two collections on the role of emotions and emotional sustainability in activist spaces and resistant practices. gpb10@leicester.ac.uk
• -Dr. Melinda Chateauvert My research (and activism) focuses on human rights, sexuality and citizenship, interrogating the current focus of US GLBT rights organizations on “civil rights” rather than a (broader) concept of sexual/human rights. To do so, I have undertaken a series of comparative historical/political case studies of the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. I have a forthcoming article in the Journal of African American History that uses the framework of sexual citizenship to re-evaluate and critique US welfare/social policies (in the 20th century) and their impact on African American women/families. Other research projects examine legal strategies within the context of US law; the work by activists with the media to create “victim-martyrs” of hate crimes; and other areas. Another essay in this area is included in the Socialism and Sex Network conferences. (SandS)I have a long-standing research project on sex workers’ resistance to management in the sex trade industry/police state, and am active in sex workers’ groups both in Washington DC and on a national level.Finally, I pursuing a grant to document the history of the US-based/portion of the Free South Africa Movement (1984-1990), as an example of effective international activism on human rights issues.
• -Leonidas Cheliotis, is a Lecturer in Criminology at the School of Law, Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London. He is particularly interested in professional and academic resistance to penal managerialism. His forthcoming books include Roots, Rites and Sites of Resistance: The Banality of Good (2009) and The Arts of Imprisonment: Essays on Control, Resistance and Empowerment (2009).E-mail: l.cheliotis@qmul.ac.uk
• -Everyday Resistance: Safaa Daoud is a student at Gothenburg University. Her specialisation subject has been Development studies, and she is currently writing her BA-thesis in sociology. Her areas of interest are resistance through nonviolence and currently for this thesis she will study groups that encourage everyday forms of resistance. She will also try to look at the moral aspects of a political act through contextualising.
• -Conflict Management, Nonviolence and Resistance: Klaus Engell-Nielsen has a BA in political science and sociology and has studied theology but for the last decade he has mostly worked with conflict management as a trainer. He has written a paper on the role of power in conflict management. He has been an active part of the Swedish plowshares movement for many years and wrote a book on the dialogue between the weapon corporation Bofors and the plowshares movement called “Samtal med ett vapenföretag” [Dialogue with a Weapon Company].
• -Resistance against Militarism: Kathy E. Ferguson does research on resistance by artists, indigenous groups, environmental activists and others to the militarization of Hawai`i. She and Phyllis Turnbull wrote Oh, Say, Can You See? The Semiotics of the Military in Hawai`i (Minnesota 1999) and continue to analyze both the expansion of the military and the practices of resistance against it, including pivotal court cases, art exhibits, walks through military-controlled areas, non-violent resistance, harbor confrontations between surfers and militarized vessels, etc. Ferguson is also writing a book about Emma Goldman’s political thinking, looking at Goldman in the context of anarchist resistance to global capitalism, militarism, states, and religions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
• -Ideology, Renewal of the Left and Resistance: Erik Furumark has a background in political science and has written both fiction and articles of a theoretical nature, concerning ideology and the renewal of the left.
• -Creative Empowerment:Lena Freimueller is a psychologist, peace worker, lecturer and trainer. Her motto is to bridge the gap between theory and practice. In 2003 she initiated “Peace In Action, PIA!” – www.peaceinaction.net – an international network home-based in Vienna. Her peace research and work is concerned with creative and humorous strategies of conscientisation with a special focus on participative art in public space. In the field of psychology she works on empowerment strategies for psychiatry-experienced people. Lena Freimueller lives and works in Austria and Germany. lena.freimueller<at>peaceinaction.net
• -Suzanne Hammad, is originally Palestinian. After around 13 years as a practitioner in the Middle East region in the fields of community development and empowerment, I am currently doing my PhD research at Queens University-Belfast at the School of Sociology, Social Policy, and Social Work.My current research seeks to investigate the intersections between ‘place’ and popular resistance, with focus on the complexities and nuances of place that are particular to contested localities. I am investigating this through an in-depth case study of a highly contested Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank territories called Bil’in that has become since 2004 a site of sustained resistance, and is characterized by the annexation of 60% of its landscape by the construction of the Israeli separation ‘fence’ as well as tens of Israeli housing units (settlements) on its land. I am interested in looking at both the overt collective protest against the wall as well as the less obvious forms of individual resistance taking place within that community, through the various perspectives of men, women, teens from the village as well as Israeli and International activists.
• -Niklas Hansson The focal point of my research is the organizational features of a local social forum that was conducted during three days in October (7-9) 2005. With the aim set for understanding and analysing the organizational conduct of a networked political initiative such as Social Forums I followed (participant observation or “shadowing”) the practical organizational work in Gothenburg. While this not being the accurate time or place for describing all the characteristics of my “fieldwork sites” I leave it uncommented for now, but it comprises preparatory work, information dissemination, communication, decision-making, and technologies (Internet, web-communication, etcetera). The local social forum is but one stream in my interest, the world social forum-process is of course a big part of my understanding of this kind of networked forms. Decision-making bodies, regulated behavioural patters (voluntary rules of behaviour), documents and protocols, the principles of consensus and non-representational bodies, consultation for themes, merging-processes, all of these are included in my work – and they are not locally enclosed but resonates globally.
• -Post-colonial Resistance: Stina Hansson is a Ph D Candidate in Peace and Development Research at School of Global Studies, Göteborg University. Main research interests are in the fields of development studies, Africa studies and postcolonial theory. Her thesis treats the implementation of the Millennium Development water target in Niger, and aims at understanding how global water policy is incorporated, negotiated and contested at the national level, taking a broader development discourse into account. Using conceptualizations from post-colonial theory such as translation, hybridity and resistance as techniques of the self whereby people constantly negotiate their own positions within the discourse, with the possibility to destabilise it, stretch its borders, find room for manoeuvre within its constraints.

Address: School of Global StudiesPeace and Development Research Institute, Göteborg UniversityBox 700, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden

•  -Christoph Haug, is currently writing his PhD in political sociology at Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) on “Discursive decision-making in meetings of the Global Justice Movements on the local, national and European level” The main question is: Through what mechanisms is ‘consensus’ constructed in such meetings and how does this relate to democracy? He has published some work local Social Forums and co-edited a volume (in German) on actors, places and strategies in contemporary social struggles (Kampf um Teilhabe: Akteure – Orte – Strategien, Hamburg: VSA, forthcoming in 2008). Christoph is also becoming increasingly interested in African social movements and influence of northern aid policies on the developement of these movements. Homepage: http://www.wzb.eu/zkd/zcm/leute/haug.en.htm
• -Civil disobedience and Post-protest: Per Herngren has written a few books about civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. Path of Resistance is translated and published in the US and Australia. (The whole book is now on Internet.) Mostly, he writes in Swedish, but some of his texts in English is on the web site or his blog. Recently, his writings has been on innovative and productive resistance vs. reactive protest resistance, using postprotest as a concept. His theories are inspired by Foucault, Butler, Laclau and Luhmann. Since 1984 he is active in the plowshares movement disarming weapons with hammers. He has served 15 month of an eight year sentence for disarming a Pershing II nuclear rocket in Florida; and he has also served some shorter sentences in Sweden and England. He tries to undermine the gap between research theory and practical activism. Per Herngren lives in the Fig Tree Resistance Community, outside Gothenburg. He works half time researching and writing on resistance, and half time as nonviolent trainer.
• Patrick Hiller holds an M.A. in Human Geography from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. Patrick currently is a Doctoral Candidate at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Nova Southeastern University. He is engaged in field work for his dissertation entitled “Nonviolent Activists in the Search for Peace: Processes of Identity Construction of Peace Activists in the United States”. He is a co-investigator of an ongoing international study on ethnicity and sense of belonging among refugee and immigrant populations in the United States and Germany. Following an interdisciplinary approach, his work and research interests encompass conflict resolution, peace studies, ethnicity, human rights, nationalism, social justice, Mexico, Latin America, social/peace movements, identity formation, culture and conflict and migration. He is skilled in web programming, grant writing, and research design (particulary qualitiative studies). He has experience working with NGOs that promote social justice in Mexico. Patrick can be reached at philler[at]nova.edu
• -Anarchism and Spaces of Everyday Political Organisation: Anthony Ince, PhD candidate at Queen Mary College, University of London. A political and cultural geographer, he studies the everyday spatial strategies of anti-authoritarian and left-libertarian groups and organisations, with a particular interest in squatted social centre collectives and radical syndicalist labour unions. His PhD research also focusses on both material and organisational practices, and the everyday role of traditions and envisioned alternative futures in shaping the identities and strategies of the groups studied. His publications include several entries in the forthcoming International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest (Blackwell, 2008), a paper on new and emerging labour organising strategies around the globe (2007), and a forthcoming chapter in the volume ‘New Perspectives on Anarchism’ exploring the historical and conceptual connections between anarchism and geography.
• -Nonviolent Revolution: Jörgen Johansen, Ph.D.candidate. Has written four books on nonviolent social defence and civil disobedience (1987, 1990, 1998 and 2000) and numerous articles. Johansen is currently doing a research project on “Nonviolent Political Revolutions since 1970” and “The impact of Civil Disobedience on the development of Democracy in Sweden”.
• -The Body, Gender Discourses and Resistance: Anna Johansson, PhD in Sociology. Her dissertation is giving the life-narratives of some women in Nicaragua and their resistance to gendered discourses. Johansson has written on feminism, obesity as resistance, irony and resistance and is now writing on rape and resistance.
• -Jeffrey S. Juris is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in May 2004, and has also served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. His forthcoming book, “Networking Futures: the Movements against Corporate Globalization” (Duke University Press, 2008), explores the cultural logic and politics of transnational networking among anti-corporate globalization activists in Barcelona, including their participation in transnational networks such as Peoples Global Action and the World Social Forum. He has also published several articles regarding this topic and the relationship between new digital technologies and grassroots social movements. Most recently, he has conducted fieldwork at the United States Social Forum, and is planning a new ethnographic research project on grassroots media activism and autonomy in Mexico. He also participates as an activist in several local economic and border justice groups in Phoenix, and is a member of Sociologists without Borders and the North American Research Network on the World Social Forum. He is also a member of the Resistance Studies Magazine editorial board.E-mail: jeffrey.juris@asu.edu
• -Johan Järlehed In their visual campaigns the Basque language movement defy the hegemonic position of Castilian and French in the Basque society and struggle to promote the use of the Basque language
• .-George Katsiaficas My research nowadays concerns uprisings in East Asia in the 1980s and 1990s. I am looking empirically at the actions of hundreds of thousands of people. In their forms of spontaneously generated protests and articulated aspirations, I locate the essential meaning of their movements. I have already found, for example, that in comparison to the Paris Commune of 1871 when the preexisting National Guard seized power on behalf of Parisians, the people of Gwangju seized power by spontaneously forming their own Citizens Army, which as part of a popular uprising expelled more than 40,000 elite South Korean troops who had brutalized the city. The direct democratic form of governance in liberated Gwangju from May 22, 1908 until the military bloodily seized the city again on May 27 is indicative of how people today are much more intelligent than any elite–military or democratically elected. Interestingly, the armed uprising in Gwangju is thought of as “non-violent” it ended the violence of the military.My previous work looks at 1968 as a global movement and examines the form of autonomous post-68 European movements.
• -Digital resistance:Mathias Klang (LL.M., Ph.D.) is a researcher in legal informatics at the Department of Applied IT, University of Göteborg. He teaches courses in computer ethics and the theory, philosophy and political science of Free and Open Source Software. His research interests and publications lie primarily in the areas of the law in connection with topics such as technology, democracy, human rights, free expression, censorship, open access and ethics.He has published several articles in these topics. Among his recent work is a co-edited volume (with Andrew Murray) entitled “Human Rights in the Digital Age” and a forthcoming edited volume “Beyond Free Software” (2007). In addition to this he defended his Phd thesis “Disruptive Technology” in October 2006.Mathias is a coordinator of the Resistance Studies Network, he has been Project Lead for Creative Commons Sweden since 2004 and a member of the Free Software Foundation Europe team since 2006.

Address: IT University, University of GöteborgBox 620, 405 30 Göteborg, SwedenMobile: + 46 705 43 22 13, Website/blog: Klang wrote

-Felix KolbI studied political science and did a PhD in political sociology. The main focus of my academic interest was and is on social movements and contentious politics. However, I always considered myself more as an activist, movement entrepreneur or campaigner than as an academic. Among others think I co-founded Attac Germany and set up a progressive social change foundation (for the English website see http://www.bewegungsstiftung.de/stiftung.html?&L=1), where I now work. Very quickly I became frustrated about the kind of research normally done about movements, which has no or little meaning for activists itself. In my book “Protest and Opportunities” I tried to outline a theory of social movements and political change, which I hope can be helpful for campaigners to understand the dynamics of change. At least I use the model when I teach for the environmental training program www.zukunftspiloten.de.

-Philosophy, resistance and social change: Christopher Kullenberg  is a Ph.D-candidate in Theory of Science at Göteborg University. His major research interests are in the fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS), philosophy and sociology. He is currently working on a thesis describing the role of statistics in the constitution of modern societies. Christopher is also interested in the mediation of social change through technology, as well as post-humanist aspects of continental philosophy and their implications for political change. He is the editor of the Resistance Studies Magazine.

Address: Department for History of Ideas and Theory of ScienceBox 200, 405 30 Göteborg, SwedenPhone +46(0)317865559, Websitechristopher.kullenberg(at)theorysc.gu.se

• -Nonviolent Intervention: Bjoern Kunter is a member of the German “Institute for Peacework and Nonviolent Conflict Transformation” (www.ifgk.de), and director of the German Federation for Social Defence (BSV -www.soziale-verteidigung.de). Kunter has earned a diploma in educational sciences, but his main scientific (and practical) interest is in the field of nonviolent intervention to foster (a) dialogue, but also (b) democracy, opposition, resistance etc.. He and his organisations are actively supporting a grassroots movement in Belarus and his last longer article was about harmful effects of foreign aid on democratisation in Belarus.E-mail: kunter@soziale-verteidigung.de
• -Dr. Christiane Leidinger, is a political scientist. Currently she is planning a study about history and political theories of resistance in Germany in the twentieth century. Her forthcoming book, „Keine Tochter aus gutem Hause – Johanna Elberskirchen (1864-1943)” (No daughter from a good family) (Konstanz: UVK 2008), describes the life, publications and activities of this early feminist, sexual reformer and socialist. Johanna Elberskirchen was a radical critic on antifeminist writers and sexual science-theories of homosexual women. Christiane Leidinger’s dissertation focuses media and globalization as well as self-censorship in the media and the militarization of culture. She has also published several articles regarding the lesbian-feminist and queer movements and theories in Germany and is co-editor of the anthology „In Bewegung bleiben. 100 Jahre Politik, Kultur und Geschichte von Lesben” (Keep on moving. 100 years of politics, culture and history of lesbians), together with Gabriele Dennert and Franziska Rauchut (Berlin-Querverlag 2007). She is a freelancer und lecturer at Berlin Universities.E-mail: cleid (at) zedat.fu-berlin.de
• -Political protest patterns in post-communist hybrid regime: the case of Russia: Anastassia Leonova is a PhD candidate in Political Systems and Institutional Change program at IMT Lucca, Italy. Since 2008 she is a visiting researcher at CEEBS at Södertörn University, Stockholm. The central point of the research is to perform an actor-based analysis of contemporary protest behavior in Russia. Focusing on the dominant patterns of contentious interaction she aims to reveal the most important characteristics of political opportunities structure and define the most burning cleavages and emerging conflicts that don´t find representation in the state-sponsored official political agenda. Past research and ideas in development, CV and contact details may be found at http://analeono.googlepages.com/
• -Discoursive resistance: Mona Lilja, PhD. Mona Lilja is a researcher at Department of Peace and development studies, Göteborg university and did her PhD on “discoursive resistance” with the dissertation “Speakings” of Resistance: Women Politicians Negotiating Discoursive Power in Cambodia, at Göteborg University, School of Global Studies – Department of Peace and Development Research (PADRIGU) in Sweden. Her focus is upon the linkages between the concepts of democrazy, power and resistance as well as its implications for women in general and female politicians in particular. Her work is conducted in a comparative framework within the context of Palestine and Cambodia respectively. She is a co-founder of the Resistance Studies Network. Lilja also holds a B.A. in Development Studies and International Relations.

Address: School of Global StudiesPeace and Development Research Institute, Göteborg UniversityBox 700, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden

• -Empowerment and Resistance: Karna Lindén holds a PhD and lectures at Örebro University, Sweden in social work and has written on topics such as empowerment.
• -Emotions and Resistance: Mattias Linder MA in social anthropology and active for a number of years in different movements – the last five mainly in the peace movement. His Master is a paper dedicated to the American peace organization Peaceful Tomorrows (www.rmproductions.cc/texts/peacefultomorrows.html). It reflects his interest in the workings of emotions, something he would like to continue to explore.
• -James David Morgan My interest in Resistance Studies, and particularly my reason for joining this listserv, are twofold. I have pursued studies and taught or organized around issues as varied as disability rights, alternative masculinities, war resistance, and class. My thesis critiqued the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities through the lens of the feminist ethics of care, and challenged the concept of liberal citizenship via disability.Outside of academic work, I focus on art and graphic design as activist tools, and lately I have been particularly drawn to active resistance through media. I’m co-founder of the Groundswell Collective, a design studio dedicated to social justice. We work primarily with activists (though we have worked with several artists as well) and keep a daily blog on art and design as forms of resistance.
• -Gregers Petersen, is an anthropologist who’s embedded in the world of free software and autonomous action. He’s currently finishing a Ph.D thesis focussing on acts of ownership and ‘giving-while-keeping’ in the boundary zone between a free software project and the market. His other, and present, research interests are subversion of technology, economic anthropology, grassroot innovation/improvisation and political action. He has over the last years been a speaker at the annual Chaos Communication Congress, Berlin, Google TechTalk, Mountain View, and the recent Rethinking Economies Conference, London. Gregers Petersen lives with his family in Copenhagen and is presently employed by the Copenhagen Business School. His sparetime is spend as OpenWrt.org developer and member of an autonomous street kitchen. www.wireless-ownership.org www.cbs.dk/staff/gp
• -Technology, Environment and Social Change Activism: Jenny Pickerill is a lecturer in Human Geography at Leicester University, UK. She is interested in how collective action, participation, spaces for dialogue, autonomy and anarchism can create pathways towards environmental and social justice. She has written a book (Cyberprotest), a number of articles and book chapters, about environmental activism, eco-building, autonomous politics, the use of internet technologies for campaigning, the anti-war movement in Britain, and environmental Indigenous politics in Australia. Her publications are listed on www.jennypickerill.info.E-mail: jp109@leicester.ac.uk
• -Global Social Movements: Paul Routledge is a Reader in Human Geography at the University of Glasgow. He works with and conducts research on social movements both in Europe and Asia. He has been working with People’s Global Action (Asia) since 1999; is active in the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and Critical Mass in Glasgow; and has been part of the anti-nuclear; environmental; peace; anti-Imperialist intervention; and pro-choice movements over the years.
• -Achim Schmitz, is living in Stuttgart/Germany and is a member of the “Institute for Peacework and Nonviolent Conflict Transformation” (www.ifgk.de) which is a small research group in Germany, dedicated to the exploration of nonviolence. The social scientist Schmitz writes his dissertation in educational science about nonviolence trainings in Germany with a focus on the 1970s to the 1990s. His qualitative analysis includes trainings for direct nonviolent action, conflict trainings against racist violence and qualification courses in Civil Conflict Resolution. He also gives seminars on universities about peacework and Civil Conflict Resolution. More about his peacework and research can be found on his website http://www.frieden-achim-schmitz.de.
• -James Scott, is teaching political science and anthropology at Yale University (USA) and have written three books on the theme of resistance: Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance (1985), Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1990), and most recently, Seeing like a State: Why Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed. (1998). Currently I am completing a book on the highlands of mainland Southeast Asia as state-resistant spaces. Tentatively, it is called: Why Civilizations Can’t Climb Hills. I also direct the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University.
• -Violence, Gender and Resistance: Lisa B. Sharlach, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Dr. Sharlach’s research addresses the sometimes violent intersection of gender and ethnicity in the developing world. She is the author of several articles on gender and ethnic warfare and is at present researching issues of women’s health and human rights. Her doctoral dissertation, “Sexual Violence as Political Terror” (2001), was on state rape policy in South Africa, Eritrea, Rwanda, Pakistan, Peru, and the former Yugoslavia. Dr. Sharlach’s research focuses on the use of sexual violence as a tactic of suppression of women of insurgent groups and, in some cases, of women on the basis of simply their gender identityE-mail: sharlach@uab.edu
• -Knowledge and Resistance: Magid Shihade had pursued his academic studies in Israel, Germany, and the United States He has completed his B.A. in Political Science, German and West European Studies, M.A. in International Studies, and Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Middle Eastern Studies. His research interests are modernity and violence, and knowledge production as a form of resistance. He teaches courses on the Modern Middle East, and courses on 9/11. He has published articles in the Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), and in publications such as Men of the Global South, chapters on violence, race and religion in an edited volume–Color Struck– among other places. His manuscript— “What a soccer game reveals: Sectarianism, violence, and colonialism in Israel and beyond.”  He is a Visiting Scholar at University of California at Davis and can be reached at mshihade@ucdavis.edu.
• -Brand Resistance: Hans Sinclair, MA in Int. Economy and Business Adm, BA in IR, Ph.D. candidate. Sinclair has written numerous reports on branding as consult, PhD-work on economic globalization, corporate branding strategies and movements’ resistance against big corporations, specifically their brand attacks. Within his PhD he is mapping various techniques of brand resistance.
• -Nonviolent Intervention and Nonviolence: Christine Schweitzer is living in Hamburg/ Germany and is a member of the “Institute for Peacework and Nonviolent Conflict Transformation” (www.ifgk.de) which is a small research group in Germany, dedicated to the exploration of nonviolence. Schweitzer is Programme Director for the international NGO Nonviolent Peaceforce (Brussels/Minneapolis), dealing mainly with conflict issues in South-East Asia, and also with East Africa and Latin America. Formerly she was the Research Director of the same organisation, and co-ordinated a Feasibility Study for Large-Scale Nonviolent Intervention. (Can be found under www.nvpf.org). Schweitzer has spent most of her working life as an organiser and researcher in the peace and nonviolence movement (Federation of Nonviolent Action groups, Federation for Social Defence). For three years, she was a “Scientific Consultant” in the State Chancellery of North-Rhine Westphalia for the themes of Civil Conflict Resolution and Middle East. By now, she has more than 28 years of experience in peace and nonviolence movements, including being one of the co-founders of the Balkan Peace Team and being involved in other work in South East Europe. She is also the co-editor of a magazine of the German peace movement (‘Peace Forum’), and has published on topics like civilian-based defence, nonviolent struggle, non-violent conflict transformation and disarmament.
• -Security, Violence, Gender and Resistance: Maria Stern, Associate Prof. and researcher at School of Global Studies, Göteborg University and the Swedish Institute for International Affairs in Stockholm (Utrikespolitiska institutet, UI). Stern has done research on Maya Indians’ resistance to dominant security discourses. At Padrigu, she is conducting the research project “Gender in the Armed Forces: Militarism and Peace-Building—Case study of Congo-Kinshasa and Mozambique.”, (together with Maria Eriksson Baaz and funded by SIDA/Sarec). At UI, she is conducting the research project entitled, “Security for whom? – Gendering security in a globalized era”. Her research interests focus mainly on Gender and Security Studies. She is also interested in International Relations theory, theories of ethnicity and nationalism, and feminist theory. She is nominated by Sweden as its representative in the European network: COST A24 The Evolving Social Construction of Threats.
• -Peter Waterman (London 1936), worked twice for international Communist organisations in Prague before becoming an academic specialist on international labour and new social movements, as well as communication and cyberspace in relation to such. Retired since 1998, he has been focussing on the union relationship with the global justice movement (particularly the World Social Forum. He has recently published a compilation of his writings in Spanish and has just submitted to a publisher another in English. He is currently working on his own autobiography as an internationalist. Research proposals: ‘Lives of Internationalists: The Active Bearers of Internationalism’‘ The Networked Internationalism of Labour’s Others.
• Nonviolent Resistance and Social Movements: Stellan Vinthagen PhD. Stellan Vinthagen, born 1964, Senior lecturer in Sociology and peace and development worker. Stellan is doing research on nonviolent resistance, globalisation and social movements at the School of Global Studies’ Department of Peace and Development Research, Göteborg University; and at Department of Social and Behavioural Studies, University West, Sweden. His PhD (2005) in Peace and Development Research is exploring the sociology of nonviolent action (see abstract). Stellan is the author of two books, a co-author of two books (one more soon published), and editor of two books and has written several journal articles and papers at conferences. He is a visiting lecturer at several institutions, e.g. College of International Citizenship (CIC), Birmingham. He is co-founder of the Resistance Studies Network, a member of the peace and development scholar network of Transcend and the Nonviolence Commission of the International Peace Research Association, an associate of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, an advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, a Council member of War Resisters’ International. He is also a movement activist (since 1980) and educator in conflict transformation and civil disobedience (since 1986). Stellan has been in totally in prison a year for peace work, e.g. in England (6 months, 1998), because of a nonviolent direct disarmament action against the nuclear submarine Trident. In January and June 2007 he was arrested and hold over night because of participation in Academic Seminar Blockades of the nuclear submarine base in Faslane, Scotland, together with over 70 other academics (see www.faslane365.org). A book on the conference proceedings is being edited. He currently is organizing a Ship to Gaza together with others. He lives in the Ecological village Lilla Krossekärr, on the island Orust, at the West-coast of Sweden, north of Gothenburg. For relevant publications, see his CV. Stellan can be reached at stellan. vinthagen @ resistancestudies. org (type address without spaces). Address: School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Box 700, SE 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden. Stellan is welcoming comments to ongoing research work; see Work in Progress on the page “Publications” on this site, link above.

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