School of Social and Political Science

Research interests

Gender, Gender and international relations, International peacebuilding, International peace and security, Gender and security, Feminism, Masculinities, Feminist political economy, Feminist political ecology, Women, Peace and security agenda

Claire's current work aims to bring a feminist analysis to the political economy of building peace. She is the author of a range of and a range of publications on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, including Gender and Peacebuilding, with Polity Press (2016), which called for more feminist attention on the political economy of building peace. Claire works with Carol Cohn at the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights on the Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace and Planet Project, co-authoring "Whose Recovery? IFI Prescriptions for Postwar States" in Review of International Political Economy (2019), "Women, Peace and Security in a Changing Climate" in the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2020), and "Feminist Critical Engagements with Green New Deals (2023) in Feminist Economics. Shorter pieces from the project include:

Securitizing Climate Change: How to Not Think about the Climate Crisis | IPI Global Observatory (theglobalobservatory.org)

Natural resources and the prospects for gender-just sustainable peace | OpenGlobalRights

Re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic? The UK Government and the WPS agenda in a time of climate crisis | LSE Women, Peace and Security blog

Women, war and climate change | War Resisters' International (wri-irg.org)

How the Women, Peace and Security agenda must change in response to the climate crisis   — International Feminist Journal of Politics (ifjpglobal.org)

Feminist Engagements with Green New Deals Infographic | The Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights (genderandsecurity.org)

Claire has also been working with the Scottish Council on Global Affairs, the Scottish International Development Alliance and the Scottish Government on the development of a feminist approach to Foreign Policy. She has co-authored a report for Climate Exchange and the Scottish Government on the links between International Climate Justice, Gender and Conflict, and a short piece on ways in which a Covid recovery plan which works for women also works for the planet. 

Claire is an active member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and has co-authored with fellow WILPF member Vanessa Farr on the implementation of the WPS agenda in Afghanistan for Sara Davies and Jacqui True’s Oxford Handbook on the WPS Agenda.

Earlier work focused on gender, militaries and militarisation, including a monograph on Forces for Good? Military Masculinities and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan and Iraq (Palgrave Macmillan 2013) and, co-edited with Rachel Woodward, the Palgrave Handbook on Gender and Military (Palgrave Macmillan 2017; read more about it here). 

Claire has taught a wide variety of courses at the University of Edinburgh, including Global Politics of Sex and Gender (GPSG), International Security, War and Justice, and Contemporary Feminist Thought. She now teaches an undergraduate honours option, Gender, Peace and Security, and a postgraduate option Gender, War and Peacebuilding. She guest lectures on Introduction to Politics and International Relations, and Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World.

Claire is a member of the Gender Politics Research Group, and member of the International Relations Research Group. She is also an active member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

She is an affiliated researcher with the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, working on the Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace project: https://genderandsecurity.org/feminist-roadmap-sustainable-peace

Topics interested in supervising

I welcome enquiries about supervision in all aspects of gender and global politics, including feminist political economy in post-war contexts, feminist approaches to foreign policy, gender and peacebuilding, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, and feminist approaches to security, including nuclear weapons.

If you are interested in being supervised by Claire Duncanson, please see the link below for more information:

• PhD in Politics (opens in new window)