Current PhD Students

Biography

Dipali Anumol is a PhD Candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University where she specializes in Gender and Human Security. Her research interests include South Asia, gender, feminist activism, legal reform for social change, and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Her proposed doctoral work aims to understand the relationship between feminist advocacy, civil society, and responses to sexual violence. Prior to Fletcher, she worked in development consulting across a range of projects on education, child rights, gender, and urban development. Dipali previously studied International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Development Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M).

Recent Publications

Building an Ethics of Care in Research During COVID-19. For King’s College London’s Feminist Perspectives series. January, 2021.

Rwanda’s Children of Bad Memory. With Samuel Munderere. In Challenging Conceptions: Children Born of Wartime Rape and Sexual Exploitation, Kimberly Theidon and Dyan Mazurana (eds.), forthcoming.

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Biography

My research aims to shed light on the experiences of sexual and gender minorities resisting discrimination and political repression, surviving violence and persecution, and seeking international protection through refuge or asylum. I am particularly interested in the interpretation and implementation of international human rights law and U.S. foreign policy as applied to sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI).

At Fletcher, I have served as the fundraising chair for the 2019 Conference on Gender and International Affairs, a co-leader of Pride at Fletcher, and a member of the Student Council and the Standing Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I interned with the U.S. embassy in Riga, Latvia  in the summer of 2019 and will be a Diverse Democracy Fellow with CIRCLE at the Tisch College of Civic Life in the summer of 2021.

Prior to Fletcher, I supported democracy and human rights programs in Russia and Eurasia at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC and was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Moldova.

Recent Publications

“Queering COVID-19” in Intersectionality and COVID-19. Fletcher LEADS. April 15, 2020.

“Pride 2020: Connecting Queer Theory and International Relations.” The Fletcher School. June 26, 2020.

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Biography

Alex McAuliff is a doctoral student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where her work focuses on gender, negotiations, and peacebuilding. She is particularly interested in the limits of women’s inclusion in negotiations absent attention to the power hierarchies that inform these processes. In her dissertation work, she questions the foundational assumptions of negotiations, with specific attention to the ways militarized power shapes the people and issues deemed conflict-related. To do so, she examines the process and legacy of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and the ways gendered, racialized, and classed violence and insecurity continue to be experienced by those at the margins, despite twenty years of a political peace. Prior to pursuing her doctoral degree, Alex worked as a dialogue facilitator with a small peacebuilding group in Northern Ireland, as well as at Seeds of Peace, a youth-focused leadership organization. While pursuing her master’s degree, she worked with the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice’s Women PeaceMakers Program. Alex holds a Master of Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School, and a Bachelor of Arts from Colby College.

Recent Presentations

April 8, 2021. “The Good Friday Agreement and the limits of inclusion: A structural rethinking of peace negotiations,” International Studies Association, Virtual.

February 18, 2021. Presented with Dipali Anumol and Kinsey Spears. “Research from my parents’ basement: Junior scholars on COVID-19’s implications for Feminist Methods,” International Feminist Journal of Politics.

November 12, 2020. “Lessons from non-violent resistance: What peace negotiations can learn.” Carr Center for Human Rights, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Biography

Prior to coming to Fletcher I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Banteay Meanchey, Cambodia. While in Cambodia I taught English and pedagogy to teenagers and young adults at a local high school and a teacher training college. I also taught additional courses in my town around how to apply for international academic programs and scholarships, art classes and health education. After my Peace Corps service, I worked for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand as her Director of Scheduling. Senator Gillibrand’s commitment to feminist issues and developing women’s leadership both in and out of politics and working with youth in Cambodia heavily impacted my academic pursuits around feminist scholarship and gender studies.

My doctoral work is building off of the work I did in my master’s thesis which looked at the intersection of child protection and security sector partnerships in Afghanistan. I studied the historical evolution of bacha bazi and the United States’ response to instances of bacha bazi by our security partners in the Afghan National Security Forces. Ultimately, I hope to expand on this work and assess how the United States addresses gross human rights violations by critical security partners in Afghanistan.

Recent Publications:

“What About the Boys: A Gendered Analysis of the U.S. Withdrawal and Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan.” Terrain Analysis, The Newsline Institute. June 24, 2021.

“Child marriage in armed conflict.” IRRC No. 911. International Committee of the Red Cross. August 2019.

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