 So, my name is Amanda Chisholm, I am a senior lecturer at King's College London in the School of Security Studies and like I said one of the co organizers of the FTGS global voices seminar series which is part of our FTGS ISA sections commitment to broader inclusion and information and engagement and so the series itself is designed to showcase the emerging and vibrant research of our section members particularly our early career and PhD students and to create a global conversation with with with the research that they're doing and and hopefully connect section members much more so these are held two times a month and they're recorded and then the recordings are held on the war studies King's College London YouTube channel. They'll be circulated through FTGS and we also will keep it on our website as well too so you know do to follow us on Twitter and Facebook and then get in contact with me if if you need a link to this video or any other or this presentation or any other presentations. So, today, again, I just want to do a warm welcome to Sarah, who is a doctoral researcher at the University of St Andrews and her talk is called beyond the GI ride, reconceptualizing our approaches to agency. So, Sarah, again, she's, she focuses her research focuses on the reproduction and perpetuation of colonial racialized and gender constructions of women who joined Islamic State through media and government narratives in the anglosphere with a particular focus on the United Nations. Her research includes post colonial decolonial and feminist approaches to international relations, critical approaches to terrorism, the politics and creation of narratives and discourses and the intersection of gender race and religion and the colonial nature of citizenship. Sarah received her undergraduate degree at the international in international relations at the University of St Andrews and holds an MA in international peace and security from here King's College London. So Sarah welcome so much, and really looking forward to hearing you present your emerging research today we also have Professor Karen Gentry who is will act as the discussant for Sarah so Karen was a former PhD supervisor so quite familiar with with Sarah's work and now she holds a very prestigious position as pro vice chancellor for arts design and social science at Northumbria University and she is an expert in in gender and terrorism in international relations more broadly. I was saying before we started this recording that I was so excited to meet her because I've read so much of Karen's work and and teach and my students love Karen's work as well too so Sarah and Karen very welcome. I'm very glad to have you both here and very warm welcome to you the audience members to so we, the format of the seminar is Sarah is going to present for about 20 to 25 minutes this will be followed by Karen who will offer some sort of commentary and discussion on the written texts are sent but also on Sarah's presentation, and then we open it up to you the audience for any sort of comments questions interactive discussion. You can do that through the chat box or the question answer box and and I will read them out loud for Sarah and she can respond to them. Can I please turn on live transcription, I can. I just noticed that I just need to how to figure out how to do that. Yeah, let me figure out how to do that. Do Sarah Karen, do you know how to turn on live translation. No. Maybe in the settings where, where recording, maybe is, or something like that I'm not entirely sure yet has recording pause more, and it just allows me to do live on YouTube live on customer live streaming. I will figure out how to do that. In the meantime, I will have Sarah do you want to start your presentation and I will. There should be an able box and okay yeah let me let me search around and figure out how to put on live translation but in the meantime Sarah do you want to share the screen and start your presentation. Perfect. Yeah, so I'm going to hopefully this works. Can everyone see that. All right. Okay, perfect. Yeah, so I just wanted to say thank you so much to Amanda for organizing this and to Karen for making the time to be here. Can you guys still see my screen. Okay, no it hasn't. Okay, never mind. Sorry. Yeah, I'm just my laptop just did something weird so All right, perfect. All right, so yeah so thank you so much for being here so this is basically focused on one a section of one of my theory chapters. And I ideally really like to be turning this into more developed fleshed out standalone paper. And so really any feedback is really much appreciated. Before I begin, what I would really like to do is kind of give you a background of my overall project. Before I kind of zoom you in on to this. And so in 2015 this phenomenon of women traveling to join the Islamic State seem to have taken over the news. You had these regular mentions of disbelief to the right of the side you can see some of the examples of some of these recent media portrayals. And we saw these decisions by Western governments to kind of abdicate responsibility for their citizens, stripping them from their citizenship, leaving them stateless. And I think that at the heart of these portrayals both by media and by government there's racialized and gendered stereotypes about women about Muslim women in particular. And the fixing of these representations and the reproduction of these narratives justifies state actions towards the othering of these populations and it's underlying the two tiered nature of citizenship. So, my project is very much a post colonial and decolonial feminist project. And I think that what's also really important for me to talk about here is that specifically in relation to this section and to discussions of agencies that a lot of this of these thoughts have kind of been in my mind and in development for a few years now. I've been a Egyptian woman in the UK Academy I've had to deal with all these thoughts and it comes from kind of trying to come to feminist scholarship as a way of trying to understand how I feel and then kind of being less disappointed sometimes. So I think that this is kind of what I'd like to touch on. And so jumping back to my project. I have three main questions that underpin my project. The first one is how the media and the government in the UK co constructed and perpetuated colonial racialized and gendered narratives about the women who joined ISIS. To what extent does this demonstrate a complicity between the media and the government. And how are they built on long standing perceptions of us versus other. And what are the implications of this for our discipline and for how we study terrorism and the discourses around it. I'm a human now. The first way I'd like to start thinking of like gender and gender and it's kind of discontent and I think feminist scholars for a long time have problematized this conception of gender and its constructions and so building on this work. I want, I strongly believe that gender just like race is constructed through these historical and social and cultural and political context but that it is also inherent to colonial. And so, particularly the goons work on the modern and colonial gender system is really important as she outlines how modernity and coloniality should be understood as shaped through these articulations of race, gender and sexuality. And that the colonization embedded a very specific racialized and gendered understanding of the male female binary and it embedded it within this logic of colonial difference. And so, through the modernization and separate and separation of the in this binary colonized women were rendered invisible. Because in this way, you, not only do you see some as humans and some as non human but also it became a tool to kind of what she described as damning the colonized. And so, in a way these these the gender binary isn't just homogenized but it's also then the each one is meant to mean the superior member. So women equals white women. And so, thinking through this and seeing gender and race as tools of domination to this day, we can then develop kind of a very specific understanding of gender and how that alongside with racialization still influences the narratives and discourses about non white non European non Western women, particularly here and so thinking about how this coloniality of gender that very much lies at the heart of our society has an impact on how we view these women and on the narratives that come about about the women who joined ISIS. And I think what's really important for me especially going into this discussion on agency is that a lot of the colonial feminist scholar and postcolonial feminist scholars have spoken about how we need to attempt to resist describing our experiences in Western terms. And their issue was mainly about patriarchy and of using patriarchy without it being situated in like a historical and local context. And so, while I agree that this mainstream understanding of patriarchy paints as a historical. I think there is a manifestation of it that can allow us to further our analysis. So thinking that, you know, not just taking it as a universalism but thinking about how it manifests differently in different places is really important. I think here it's really important obviously to talk about Bell hooks and how she spoke of a political system of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy is still really important because our feminisms in their difference are all struggles to end this oppression and this oppression while it might be the same does still kind of it manifests differently depending on maybe geographical place or historical or societal factors. And so, some of these postcolonial feminists have really taken to task the way that mainstream feminist scholarship investigates and studies women in the global south or racialized women and marginalized women. And so thinking away from what Spivak called these dominant structures of knowledge production to turning to how trying to bring that into thinking of how these narratives are very harmful in the way that they are racialized and gendered because they are not just narratives but they also do legitimate certain actions and certain actions that are very material. So while we might think of it as just scholarship or just narrative or just discourses these, this type of scholarship that takes women from the global south as a category for granted, and kind of universalizes all these women and places them into a very flat category. So what Mohanti said defines that what she called third world women as subjects outside of social relations. So when we see them as other and we place them beyond this definition of what we see as women, then we allow for a definition of the other and for ourselves as well. And so this self representation of Western women right and it's in a secular liberated way would not be possible without this representation of the woman who was the other. This is religious or often to religious the one that is oppressed the one that lacks control. And so you privilege one by making it the norm. And so thinking of how this third world difference that Mohanti calls is really important. When we think of constructions of Muslim women in this present day, and how this has been present in Western culture and society this is since colonial but it's also and it's allowed for this legitimation of imperial and colonial projects. And so these intersections are so important for us to notice and to really delve into. When it comes to speaking of the women who joined ISIS because there's been a very orientalist exceptionalism that has played into this and that. And unfortunately a lot of feminist IR literature has fallen into the same racialized stereotypes where women are viewed through this very universal rights framework. And that as I said over looks the power structures that this universal entails. And so realizing it sounds really simplistic but realizing that not all women share the same experiences, especially when it comes to gender and gendering, and the way that our constructions of these women are created allows us to look at how these terms such as jihadi brides are really really malevolent. And so, in a way when we talk about these universals, you erase the experiences of women who are not white Western women because at this time universal means white Western woman. And so, in a way it can thinking of universalities allows our concepts to be stronger, but at the same time it really makes them shallow, and it makes them. We are unable to define them properly and they miss a lot when we try to represent them as universal. And so the Western feminism has really have really limited the boundaries of feminist thinking because we've thought within this frame. And this is really evident when we look at how particularly for me, a lot of preeminent feminist scholars in the Middle East in particular, have only gained traction outside of the Middle East, and had their work validated outside of the region when it has fallen into line with that one universal feminism that falls that is supported by Western feminism so this is very apparent towards secular secularism and has and towards like a small sea conservatism away from a small sea conservatism has really defined a lot of contemporary writing from the region unfortunately that tends to look outward. And so I think that it's really important when we talk about making women's voices heard is that thinking about, are we really hearing those voices in all their multi dimensional ways or are we only hearing the ones that fit within what we have determined. And so we need to think about that we cannot see women or Muslim women or Middle Eastern women as a monolith, because even and that they all have the same views or goals or hopes or dreams. Because even if we do that in the name of liberation it is still very limiting. And so I think that it's really important because the discourses as I was saying, do not operate in a vacuum they have very real impacts both on these women and on the societies that we live in. And so you can look at the case of Shamima Vega for instance without seeing how it has had a very, very obvious impact on citizenship laws in the UK right now. And so thinking about how, you know, Vegas said that feminism with decolonial politics needs to contribute to the struggle to assert its right to existence and so if we think about these multi dimensional analyses of oppression, and have thinking at gender and race and class as mutually exclusive categories or as if they can just be kind of brought into one very easily. It's really important and that sits at the heart of this project. And so, when we move towards agency. What I tried to do is that first I focus on providing like an overview of feminist security studies literature, particularly on agency, and how it was has discussed violent women and gender. And I would like to focus on here just for the interest of time is thinking about this multi dimensional analysis of oppression in our discussions of agency. And so thinking about, you know, I take very importantly and those call to take women's lives seriously and I think that there is. There are a variety of different reasons that contribute to the decision making of women. But however, I always like to say that my project is not concerned with the individual agency and choices of the women at hand. So I'm here to provide insight into why women went and joined ISIS. What were their push and pull factors what were the motivations that is not what my research is trying to do. What I'm trying to do is focus on the institutional and structural systems that have created specific constructions of these women, and how have these constructions legitimated certain actions. And what does that tell us about our society about our politics and also about our discipline. So it might be weird if I've really just made it clear that I'm not concerned with the individual motivations of the women to then tell you I'm going to talk about agency. But I think that this is why it's really important because I think there is a very overwhelming presence of agency when we talk about violent women, for instance, but a lot of these depictions have really focused on do women have agency or do they not have agency and if they do have agency how do they display it. So thinking of what do we mean when we speak of agency right a lot of I found out a lot of literature doesn't explicitly define what we mean or what this particular author means when they speak of agency but it can also vary from agency or personal agency, or political agency with a lot of gray in between. At the end of the day it's still this very same shallow binary. And so I argue that agency has not only become a distraction but it's almost become weaponized in conversations around women and in feminist conversations. Because I think that when it comes to discussing, particularly the women who joined ISIS. I don't think there is much of a use in discussing whether or not they have or don't have agency. On one hand, I think it's impossible to prove. But on the other hand, I believe that it's almost unnecessary, because I think the depictions of these agency and how these depictions are operationalized both in our academic discourse but also within media and government discourses is really important to see how this has been weaponized. And I think it's really important here to say that even if I'm critical of it I'm not trying to discredit or discount the importance of the work that focuses on this individual approach to agency. I feel like this is a different realm that can help us in some ways but I do disagree on an entirely individualistic approach, because I think that it takes for granted what happens structurally. I think many of the sources of the rhetoric surround agency, which we don't explicitly discuss come from colonial and imperial constructions of women, and particularly of non European women, and what it means to actually exercise agency and this empowerment discourse. So for me there's not really a point in understanding why women joined ISIS, when the way we try to do so is inherently colonial in nature, because what, if I prove that they do have agency then what have I done. Because I think if we clarify and we conceptualize what we mean, it's really important but it's also looking at how this concept that we've positively associated with feminism and with empowerment has been used to further oppress women, because women that do not fit within this mold, especially within some of the feminist spaces that we hold really dear, because I think that we've rightly moved away from thinking on the state level and thinking about the personal individual experiences of women. But then I think again is that when we, when we don't, when we, there's almost been too much of a move of collapsing this political into the personal without looking at the structural as well. Because I think that while there's been a recognition of the role of women as agents of violence and I think this is why it's great to have Karen here as well and I'd love to hear her thoughts on this I think there's also a lot of these arguments around agency implicitly assume that this agency and this recognition of it is necessary to be able to bring these violent women back into the fold of what is deemed appropriate. Whether it is what is deemed appropriate by the state for instance a lot of the work on reintegration on PVE and CVE has looked at and on counterterrorism has looked at kind of how do women have agency within counterterrorism within PVE or within reintegration and how do we address that. Or within what we see as acceptable boundaries of women that are determined by these colonial times. And so, while I think that again this literature provides useful categories of analysis the increased focus on individuality and has led to almost a blindness to the institutional factors at play that influence these very same representations. And I want to be clear that I'm not arguing for us to return to universities. I think that an informed and contextual approach that not only focuses on the personal circumstances of the individual without a consideration of the structural factors at play is not is necessary. And so, there have been some feminist scholars that have kind of poked and prodded at this idea of agency I think notably when it comes to like women involved in violent extremism there's been a hull and octer and I think they've done. It's a great start in thinking of how agency can almost be a catch all but I think that their criticism still fall short of what I believe we should be reaching for in our interrogation of the concept. Octer for instance, it focuses too much on I think political ends and on legitimate participation in politics, without really questioning what that actually means and I think when we fall into the trap of equating agency with politics and with political participation it's again, very much almost a neoliberal interpretation of agency, and it's very much grounded in a progressive political project that has this empowerment definition of agency and so thinking that legitimate participation and politics equates agency is again a weaponization of agency to determine who can and cannot participate based on a liberal progressive project. And so I think that this similarly with the hall is that she argues that there's a distinction between legitimate and the distinction between illegitimate legitimate agencies unhelpful. I think what a lot of these criticisms have been missing is that they are entirely too focused on gender without a single mention of race, and how it intersects with this. And so again it falls into the same limiting nature of universality that I spoke of earlier, and these dynamics are very much at play. And so this inherently limiting nature when women feel like they have to self describe their experiences through the words and experiences of others, and this limiting frame of agency has been present within a lot of the scholarship. And so for me, it's not really a surprise that non white Western European women don't feel like they fit within this universal and they feel uncomfortable with having discussions about agency and within within feminism, and I think that agencies seen as a universal equalizer that it's assumed that everyone either has wants to have and sees in the same way that are that Western feminism dictates. And so, to, to think that agencies only ever about political participation or about resistance is very much enshrined in these neoliberal conceptualizations of it. And it allows for an explanation of agency where women's agency or its lack is only determined in relation to the state. When it comes to Muslim women, in particular, this binary of a press slash liberated has agency doesn't have agency has also distorted perceptions of Muslim women. And it limits women's rights to self determination, and for them to be able to be multi dimensional. And thinking of how these binaries that we have even like victim and perpetrator are really grounded in this kind of Eurocentric feminism is really important because we need to think about how agency is really a very complex thing that we can't have as a mold that we have or we don't have. And so when we collapse the personal down into the political, it really doesn't take us any farther and understanding the very the full picture. And so when we think of these so called jihadi brides, so much of our discussion has focused on depictions of their agency and so this is why I think that it is unnecessary. So yeah, just to wrap up, I think that to summarize my three main issues with representations of agency are that it has a very narrow focus on individual personal agency and its manifestations. There has been a lack of in depth theorization about how race intersects with gender when we discuss agency, and that this necessitates a move towards a more structural approach to how agency is built, and how it's operationalized through colonial gender and racialized discourses. I think that it's really important to think about how this fits within a bigger neoliberal project of feminism and how our feminisms can be co opted within them. And I think Lola Olofemi put it really well when she said that this focus on the self as a vehicle for self improvement and personal gain is a very central tenant for mainstream neoliberal feminism and it allows the current system to remain as is. And so my question really is what does it mean when we talk about having agency when we're in a repressive and violent world that still seeks to dominate women around every corner. So I think that we need to think beyond this binary. And so thinking about this and thinking about who do we permit to speak and in what ways and when and to what goals is really important because to end Lugans highlighted that we can't separate our lives from the accounts that are given of them because this articulation of our experience is a part of our experience. And these depictions and these representations of agency are not separate from our experience and they are not separate from the way that these women in their lives are led, and they are very real and material consequences that affect us and affect and affect women across the globe. So it's really important for us to think about that. I think I'm at my 20 minutes so thank you. I will stop sharing. Alright. Thanks, Sarah. There is so much here to talk about and I'm going to keep my comments brief because I want to allow time for questions but one. So, you know, moving has meant that I don't get to supervise Sarah anymore which was a great sadness and leaving St Andrews. And so it's been really great to come back about a year later and to see where you're at and your progress and I just think it's remarkable. So thanks for letting me into your to where your projects at. And I think you're, you're absolutely on the right track and needing to interrogate how race works and where feminism has ignored how race works. And so I think that this is a necessary discussion when I'm really looking forward to hearing your conclusions. So I think I mean I have my brain is kind of going because I think you brought out different elements today than what I read in the chapter. So, and I, one of my questions really had been knowing that this is a chapter in your thesis. I was going to ask, can you speak to how this contributes to the bigger project as a whole. But I think you really did that at the end of the talk. And so, I'm going to let my brain continue to mull those over for just one, two more minutes while I ask the other two questions that I had thought about. And it's a kind of, it's a curiosity that, and I that I'm really looking forward to your response. I was kind of surprised that there was not a lot of discussion about intersectionality. And maybe it's in a previous chapter, or maybe there's a reason you've chosen not to include it as much I mean you've cited some of the people who work on intersectionality, in the chapter, but you don't go into to it in depth. So I was wondering about why that was, and then even thinking back to how your decolonial critique of feminism works with critical race theory, right and really understanding the racialized structures that govern knowledge production, right I mean I think that's really what's coming through in your chapter. So, and I, I'll actually return to this but the next question I had which is, you, you highlighted at the beginning today, and it's a really great tantalizing passage at the beginning of your chapter about your own personal narrative and experience and how difficult it was initially to write the chapter maybe engage in some of the material. And, and that you're seeking how to figure out how to turn this into a standalone paper. And I wonder if that's the way in to a standalone paper like you, there is this again this excellent passage at the beginning of the chapter where you talk about this, but then it doesn't come through in the rest. And so I'm kind of wondering, well, what does that mean that like, what is, what is that personal encounter that I think is really deeply important to bring out. I think we need to have those conversations as scholars as teachers and as students in order to create that space. But it's a real place of vulnerability too. And so I'm deeply deeply cognizant of that vulnerability. So then with today and agency and you know, I even been reflecting back you know it's been about 20 years since I finished my PhD almost 20 years and recognizing then that we, I would not now say we deny agency. I think we temper women's agency and the way that we discussed them right and that's always been about, I mostly have written historically about how that's gendered, more recently discussed it in an intersectional framework. And there's a comment that I thought was really funny in your paper where you said and they all conclude that women can be violent with an exclamation mark and I was like, we had to because there was so much denial that women could be violent right that I was presenting to feminist audience and getting real resistance in saying that women can be violent. And I think we've come a long way in 20 years. But I think you're right that we have to look at that, that bigger structure of how the gender structure impedes on our understanding of particular lives and how they can be political and how they can be as gentle. But I think race does that as well. And where I came to as you were finishing your paper is, do we even need to use the concept of agency anymore is it too tied up in the neoliberal project right is it too tied up in white Western rationality for it to be a purposeful and useful term. And is there something else that we need to adopt and move on to. And, and I would, I'm dying to hear the response to that because yeah, maybe it's just too, it's too white, it's too masculine, and it's just not useful concept. So then where do we, where do we go. So that's, that's my those are my comments in a nutshell but I really did want to kind of keep them brief to allow other people to come in. Do you want to respond to Karen or do you want to take a few questions. I'm good with either. Well, you, you do have a few questions and I'm still trying to do captioning I'm you. Yeah, I'm clearly computer illiterate so I really significantly apologize to people who've requested it and this is something I'll get my columns team so our next seminar will definitely have a captioning that's a really important point so thanks for raising it and sorry, I couldn't meet the challenge this time but yeah. You have a collection of questions so should we just collect them on then we can have more of a broader conversation as well. Okay, so Mia bloom has said thank you for this talk to our one quick question. The framing of the G hybrid by mainstream media, merely a reflection of the usual MSM click bait to drive readers to their site rather than neocolonial or racialization. So just ask you to reflect upon upon that. So I'm going to go to Cassinova says hello thank you very much sir for this presentation it was super clear and so important. I myself wrote a bachelor's thesis about the topic and struggled with this concept agency as well. How and whether to use it and how it impacts the field. I wonder what the broader conclusions are do you have particular ideas about how to deal with women's radicalization if not through the agency lens, developing on what's a structural means exactly and how it bridges the lacking of of the agency concept. Does that make sense to read that clear. Yeah. Okay. And then Denise Horn writes your work here highlights the difficulty of defining the separation of agency and structure. If we remove individual agency from the equation is there a delineation at all between them. I agree with you about the conflation of agency and a particular kind of political participation. So those are those really important questions. So I'll leave that the floor to you. All right. I will try to be useful. I think, first, Karen, on the intersectionality thing I think it's really interesting because I think there should like in the chapter I talk a bit about how, you know, there's been a noticeable increase in us using the term intersectionality. And I think that, in a way, this has almost been used to kind of absolve people of responsibility for certain structures and I think that it's kind of become a bit defanged because it's been co opted by the same like neoliberal institutional situation, because I think that, you know, it's, there's a difference between saying yeah well race and gender intersect and then trying to investigate how do they intersect and where do these categories come from. And how are we not just reproducing these dominant logics if we are not thinking outside of it so it's like if we're really wanting to be intersectional. So I think it's really like, oh well I recognize that race and gender are a thing, but it's really trying to delve deeper into like thinking of how they've been constructed. So I think a couple of really interesting articles one by Sirma Bill Gay and one by Sarah Salem and Rakiya Jibrin, I think, on intersectionality and on like revisiting intersectionality. I think the build one is called like saving intersectionality from feminist intersectionality something like that. And so I think, you know, and I think that there's there should be a bigger reflection on like us personally as academics and how we use these concepts and what happens when we almost like temper them down when we use them because we use them in a way to remain relevant right like I we use them because we need to kind of stay with this tide like I think it's similar to like, for me this is the example my mind always jumps to with like universities and EDI right where it's like, you know, we do diversity initiatives so that we're seen as we're relevant and that we're still able to like co-op this idea of diversity while still it being still a bit shallow. And so that jumps really well into your second question on my personal experience. And I think that this is something that I'm still really hesitant about, because I think that there's no denying and you've heard me talk about this project a lot that like this project is really personal to me, not in like the same kind of way but because a lot of these thoughts reflect like how I feel about things. And so it's interesting that, even though it comes through in some bits it's almost like I try and hold that personal back so that the project doesn't seem illegitimate. So I think it's, it's something that I need to feel more comfortable about doing. And then I think your third question lines up really well with Denise's question on, you know, if we didn't separate agency from structure, and is there a use to even using agency as a as a concept. I personally I don't know if there's a use to use the agency as a concept anymore because I think that, unless we really think about what we're doing when we're using it similar to intersectionality like if we don't really think about what we mean and where it comes from and what we imply when we talk about it. Then I think that it falls flat, and I think that it then doesn't become useful because then it just again reproduces the same things and it produces this whiteness and this masculinity. And so I think that this idea of like if we didn't separate structure and agent. And if we do, it's like when we when we put these binaries in, we automatically privilege one binary over another. So it's and at the same time, it really, I think makes our analysis really shallow, because I think that if we just think in terms of, you know, structure agent and if we think just in terms of individual or collective if we think just in terms of, you know, victim or perpetrator, then there's so much of the picture that we miss. So it's really important that we kind of try and resist these binaries because they're really easy. But I think that we need to try and move past that. And so to Mia's question about how this phrasing is about clickbait. The question then would be, but isn't it also racialized in neoliberal clickbait, because then they know that that is what people look for. And in, in, it's, it's a kind of circular economy almost where it's like, people look for stuff that is divisive, and it falls and then at the same time, these header headlines by the Daily Mail, for instance, perpetuate these discourses and they make them irrelevant. And so I think that's would be a kind of my response question and so then to Eleanor's question about ideas about how to deal with women's radicalization. I don't think I'm the right person to answer this. I have a lot of thoughts about radicalization and they're not entirely positive. I think that I, I, I don't really think about the, the, rather like the logistical almost practical and not not that it's not that I don't think about practical implications but I think that the way we approach radicalization inherently is wrong. So I don't think that I would be able to say I have ideas about how this would help deal with radicalization so I don't think I'm the right person to answer that question. Yeah. So we've got a few more questions coming. And I think I mean these questions are hitting at, you know, yeah, it had the concept of agency how we use as, you know, as academics to, you know, to understand have a deeper understanding of why people do certain I know in my own work on, you know, I'm grappling with that too to think about, you know, people who are marginalized and dispossessed or considered dispossessed and marginalized in the broader global economy. How do we think about them as more than just so duped and dispossessed by structure that they have no other, do you know what I mean, and thinking about agent agency in that way and I find personally I find like for Lance work, and more work on affect what he talks about agency within kind of that framework and in more of micro moments that isn't just about this understanding that the individual has this like grand arc narrative or where they want to be in their life and they're making these rational decisions based on that but sometimes we're just it's habitual pathway caught in the moment right that we're just living our everyday lives and sometimes we're so exhausted by that we do we don't actually think, you know, the the same way that these how you the scientists have articulated agency right it's so I mean that would just that's helped me I'm not sure if that will that will help you the ideas of acting kind of everyday slow death stuff but other questions here. Around race, I mean the race, you know you could argue that doesn't have a lot of ontological truth to it but of course it has a lot of, you know, it's it's certainly embodied and really felt and whatnot but you know, Amy Horn asked that question about. This is an informative presentation one question I've always answered or have always answered on what is my race I look at the white checkbox and ask what is that what is white, how is white to race. So I guess, you know, asking to think about how we understand race and who gets racialized and and I guess you know I'm thinking also work by, you know, more more critical feminist scholars that interrogate whiteness as well who gets deemed as and particularly Eastern Europeans Bosnians right Russian like. How do we articulate them within this broader kind of post colonial framework of who's white and who's not right and and and think about racing this way. Does that make sense. That was kind of rambling at that point. Okay. Callie asked thank you for our states thank you for very interesting and timely discussion, given the ECHR ruling today that France violated rights of French women and children in a hall but not properly considering the case of reparation I would be interested in whether you have any recommendations for human rights groups humanitarian agencies advocating for reparate a reparation of women who left the UK to allegedly join ISIS, and how we frame this issue. Yeah, tough questions for you Sarah. Yeah, also has a follow up question to for you to consider agency as you move forward to a paper or a book. Consider the possibility or consider the possibility that discussions of agency have different utility, as it's correlated to questions of, for example, DDR, the focus on agencies intimately tied to legal definition of guilt in many countries and whether these women will be rich parades so did they, I guess have agency, or were they duped in that regard right around guilt. Okay, Scarlett Durant, where can I read your work on this further there you go you got fans great I think you missed where your chapter is, or she's missed where your chapter is and would like to know more about it. Maybe if you, we can, you can tell me or we, we can email out the group the participants if you have anything if you want to email them or link or anything like that for further reading. Mia's recommended a book in the chat box with a hyperlink if you want to click on that. Oh, and then Denise Horn has a follow up to be clear I don't think that agency and structure represented binary structures may give us types of agency. Okay, so there you go Sarah all on your plate, you can choose what to respond to and what not to respond to. No, I think this is really interesting because this is also this is like the first time I'm properly like talking about this work so I'm really excited because it's good to hear everyone's different interpretations and the questions that they have. I think. Yeah. Where am I going to start I think yeah that I, they're all really different questions. So about repatriation and how we frame these, this, this issue. It's a really tough job because I think that if you have to kind of battle against the tide of, you know, people who may like again like mainstream media and a lot of government discourses about these women so I think that it's hard to think of how can you actually reframe this issue. Without being able to like on a standalone basis I think it's like it's a really tough battle for you to be able to to have I think that for me it's like thinking like for me what matters is that like thinking the fact that these are also human beings. You know what I mean because I think that unfortunately and this links to me as question. A lot of this conversation is about agency and I realized that agency also has legal implications and I think that's also a problem because I think that there's a really a question by Aaron Bains that talks about how this idea of victim slash perpetrator. She looks at it in the case of Uganda is when it comes to transitional justice is really difficult because you have legal implications for it, but she makes a very good argument about expanding these legal definitions and about thinking about how, you know, we think of it as in that the law is the law but like the law is created by people and it has biases in and of itself and so thinking about when we do ddr initiatives. Right. Are we thinking about these things or not. I think most of the time we aren't. I worked on ddr for a short while and so I know that like, there isn't really these conversations happening right it's either you're a victim you go to camp a, or you're a perpetrator you go to camp B and we try to like deal with that. Right so or a perpetrator so yeah I think it's, it's really difficult. I think that. Yeah so thinking about framing is that like there's two different questions there for me there's a question about like what I would like to see versus like what would actually work. I don't know what would work because I think that you're fighting an uphill battle, but I think for me, what really matters is the fact that like, these are human beings, they might have made mistakes. We all make mistakes, they might have had like, I think, had their, their travel facilitated by, you know, Western security agents so they know how ISIS works. I think it's like, and that's not me being conspiracy theorist that's actually something that has happened. And so I think that it's a really frustrating situation. When I, what else thinking about where is my work I haven't published anything yet but hopefully you will see this out sometime soon, maybe. I think what I sent to Karen and Amanda was a very draft form of this in the form of like one of my PhD chapters. But maybe I'll hopefully get something out soon considering I'm starting my third year. Stay in touch. I can send my email, or I can my email is SG 224 at st Andrews.ac.uk email me and I can maybe send something. I have seen the book by Leonie. And yeah, I think yeah I think Denise that's very interesting idea that structures can give us different types of agency that is kind of yet the interpretation that I have. And yeah, definitely considered subah moods application of piety there's a lot of subah moods in this chapter as well. And so, I think I've answered everything. I'm not sure, but I've tried. Yeah, there's been a lot of vibrant discussion here which I mean you're if these discussions touch on to broader international relations and global politics and feminist debates as well too right. So, so I think this is why this such a such a great timely work that you're doing too. And I think Karen asked as well too but I wonder for the benefit of the audience and myself too, can you give us an overarching of your, the broader kind of. I know you're not done your PhD yet but the book project the broader kind of book project that we can see in the pipeline coming down. Yeah, so I think that this project is a really interesting one because I think that like, while it's kind of framed around the so called jihadi brides, I think that it's actually they're almost my case study in a way of like trying to interrogate like how do these racialized and gendered gender discourses come about what allows them to be operationalized right so what are these conversations about agency for instance or about race or about racialization where do they come from, and what are they doing and then also thinking about like, I try and triangulate in a way like the government the media and us as academics and bringing in academia into as well and thinking about that role and about what it tells us about that relationship. And yeah what that means for like our discipline for how we we study terrorism, terrorism, you know, and stuff like that so that's a really that's really not a very good explanation I really need to get my elevator pitch better considering I'm going into third year, but that's like a broad overview. That's fantastic. I just so that I think I'm going to abuse my position of chair here and wait if anyone else has any other questions but I do wonder is a question I guess, and this is something that I grapple with when when you do a research particularly on communities who have been racialized and gendered in particular ways right and you're trying to speak against that. And, and speak about the violence of that right representing them in this particular way and I just wonder. Who then do you represent them in your own writing right like the, what, what ways do you, what ways do you think about giving voice or articulating these, these people in this context, beyond like you said this kind of, well it's a case study but I guess, you know there's that tension of not wanting to treat them as yet another specimen or an object to study right like, so maybe kind of your your methodological or, you know, ethical kind of strategies to the ways in which you represent these communities in your own writing. Yeah, I think that one thing for me is that one reason why this project is really personal is that like, I'm an Arab Muslim woman. So I think that for me a lot of these, not that I can speak for these women but I think that a lot of the ways that that I have issues with this come again like a very personal experience for me so I think trying to, to make that very clear but also I make it explicitly clear that I'm not speaking for these women. And then I'm not trying to kind of, I'm not studying them. I'm not studying anything like I'm, it's this situation where it's like, it's, again it's trying to explain it right it's like I'm not concerned with what they have done right or because it's more of like the representations of it, and what it tells us about what is happening that I'm really concerned with. The other part of that is that like my analysis is very, very much a postcolonial decolonial feminist framework. It is situated strongly in the work of these scholars. There's a very, I think Karen Karen has read this about why I'm not using Foucault for something that a lot of people would be like this is an excellent Foucaultian project. So I think that being very clear about why is that I'm using specific methods and specific theories and specific frameworks and really positioning that at the heart of this. I think is what I'm trying to do in trying to avoid those pitfalls of just becoming another person who has just turned them into an object of study. That's great. Yeah, thank you. So, I, are there any other question oh there are a few see they keep cropping up all these questions there you know you know what you know you're really on to something brilliant when you're getting this much engagement right so. So please for you and I can't wait to see something out in print zoom. No pressure though but yeah, something brilliant here. So, Sue cook total big fan I'm, I'm now a big fan of your work to Sarah says, just thank you so much for sharing your work. Amy Horn says in your studies do you find that there are any correlation with any Russian influence politically with the ISIS pride so you mentioned Western secret or agents or whatnot. Did Amy asked if there's some some from the Russian influence and Denise Horn says Sarah a pleasure to see your work developing looking forward to seeing more thank you so lots of fans lots of love but yeah. Thank you so much really I think it's good to hear that it wasn't a total dud and I have a wasted an hour out of everyone's time. To Amy's question I that's not it's not what I look for so I think I'd not again I'm not well placed to answer that. I think that there are other people that are doing really good work about Russian influence and things like that but I'm not that so I don't know. And yeah just thank you so much again Karen for your time to Amanda for for setting this up and for organizing this. Yeah, thank you everyone for coming. Great. Thanks so much for being a part of the series. You know Sarah and sharing your work and and we're really looking forward like myself but I know us as FTGS sections really looking forward to seeing how it grows and supporting you. Anyway, in any way we can so and Karen thank you again so much thought for your time and sharing your time and your expertise and your engagement spin. I think, you know, a great example of what a feminist collective looks like in practice right and so really really happy that we've created this space and carving out more space. So and again thank you audience for tuning in and asking those really thoughtful questions and engaging questions and stay tuned we have another FTGS seminar next Wednesday to same time same virtual space so please follow FTGS on Twitter and Facebook to find out more. Sarah is also on Twitter so we'll be giving Sarah a shout out as well to on on Twitter and then we'll also be sharing the recording as well for those of you who want to share it on. It's a great gift to give to loved ones. And within international relations right share the love share the brilliance of Sarah so thank you again for joining us thank you Sarah, thank you Karen and have a lovely afternoon everyone and we'll see you soon. Thanks everyone.