IRIS NRC Affiliate Claudia Liverseed Wins Award for Best Undergraduate Paper at the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies Annual Conference
UW-Madison senior Claudia Liverseed spoke at the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (WIPCS) Conference at Marquette University in April. Her conference paper “Women as Peacemakers: Rwanda as a Case Study for Women’s Leadership in Reconciliation Processes” received the Award for Best Undergraduate Paper at the conference. We asked Claudia to say a few words about her studies and involvement at UW-Madison and about her experiences at WIPCS.
“My name is Claudia Liverseed, and I’m a fourth-year undergraduate majoring in History and Gender and Women’s Studies with a certificate in Global Health. Throughout my time on campus, I’ve been involved in community engagement, working for the Morgridge Center for Public Service, interning this past summer in rural Kenya, and working with a student organization in partnership with Malawian community leaders. I have also been involved in research through the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program, where I now serve as a mentor to freshmen and sophomores getting involved with different opportunities. I am about to finish my Honors Thesis, focused on the intersections of gender and colonialism in international institutions in response to the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak. I am passionate about forming equitable university-community partnerships and expanding involvement in humanities research, and I hope to one day become a professor to continue my work.
For the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies Conference, I had the privilege to be able to present the research paper I wrote on gender and peacemaking following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. My paper analyzed the proven effectiveness of women’s involvement in peacemaking processes through Rwanda as a case study, challenging the idea that women are inherently peaceful and instead demonstrating how gendered oppression leads women to be more aware of the broader social, political, and economic causes of conflict.
My favorite part of the conference was probably the conversations I had after my panel presentation, where people came and talked to me about my work. It was incredible to get to be in a space with so many students, professors, and community members who shared my values and cared about issues of injustice going on in the world. I learned so much from the opening plenary on Palestine, as well as the panel discussions I went to on immigration, education, and the violence in Sudan. Especially in this political climate, I left the conference with a renewed sense of hope for the world after getting to be in community with people committed to creating a more peaceful and just future.”
Learn more about Claudia’s work at The Nonviolence Project and read her blog post on the Kenya Finance Bill Protests here.
