EJPG Best Article Award
The EJPG Best Article Award is awarded annually to the best article published in the European Journal of Politics and Gender in the previous year.
All articles published in EJPG in the previous year are eligible. The article shortlist is determined by the EJPG Editorial Team. The award-winning article is selected by a committee appointed by the Editorial Team. The prize is normally awarded at the European Conference on Politics and Gender.Announcing the winner of the 2023 Best Article Award
The 2023 Best Article Award for the European Journal of Politics and Gender has been awarded to Elisabeth Olivius, Jenny Hedström, and Zin Mar Phyo for their article “Feminist peace and or state co-optation? The Women, Peace and Security agenda in Myanmar", published in EJPG Volume 5, Number 1, February 2022. The article is available open access.
2023 Award Committee
Rossella Ciccia (Oxford University, United Kingdom)
Zoe Lefkofridi (University of Salzburg, Austria)
Conny Roggeband (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Why did the Committee select this article?
The European Journal on Politics and Gender is delighted to award the 2023 best article prize to Elisabeth Olivius, Jenny Hedström, and Zin Mar Phyo, for an outstanding piece of research on feminist peace in Myanmar. The article elaborates a new conceptual approach to feminist peace that is of analytical and practical utility to research on politics and gender. The article conceives feminist peace as a political condition that allows all women affected by conflict to participate in reconstruction. The authors draw on interviews with 40 activists and advocates to show how this aspiration falls short in the Myanmar case. Through channelling international donor funds to specific women’s groups in specific locations, the government hinders diverse women’s ability to contribute to and benefit from peacebuilding initiatives. Women in conflict affected areas become those least likely to participate. The jury was impressed with this article’s new, critical perspective to scholarship on the Women, Peace, and Security agenda and on its establishment of a new way to conceive of whether a feminist peace is or is not being implemented. The jury further valued the article’s empirical contribution into how illiberal post-war states can manipulate international aid to exclude women's voices and hinder feminist peace. Lastly, the jury celebrates the article’s relevance to current political debates and the inclusion of an activist in the authors’ team.
As editors we would like to congratulate Elisabeth Olivius, Jenny Hedström, and Zin Mar Phyo on receiving the EJPG Best Article Award for 2023. We would also like to thank our judges for their time and commitment in judging the shortlisted articles and showing their support for gender scholarship and EJPG.
Read the award winning article:
Feminist peace or state co-optation? The Women, Peace and Security agenda in Myanmar
Elisabeth Olivius, Jenny Hedström, and Zin Mar Phyo