Maria Stern of the Department for Peace and Development Research at Göteborg University will give a talk exploring violence embedded in the possibility (or impossibility) of the promise of security and the fantasy of representation based on a surprising variety of examples. This seminar marks the start-up of the new Strategic Institute Programme (SIP) at PRIO: Arms Against a Sea of Troubles. In her talk, Stern will draw upon examples from the US security strategy in its 'Global War on Terror', as well as from 'security narratives' of Mayan women in Guatemala. Paradoxically, violence is both enacted and reproduced in efforts to procure safety, even in resistance. Perhaps, however, by carefully showing the conjuring moves that create the seeming possibility of secure subjects, we can begin to resist the seductions of a grammar that also inflicts harm.

The seminar will be chaired by J. Peter Burgess, leader of the SIP and PRIO's Security Programme.

Time: 5 April, 10:00-11:30 Venue: PRIO, Fuglehauggt. 11, Oslo. See map. The seminar will be held in English. Please register with: seminar@prio.no

Maria Stern is a Lecturer (since 1994) and Research fellow at Padrigu (2004-5). Her research interests focus mainly on Gender and Security Studies. She is also interested in International Relations theory, theories of ethnicity and nationalism, and feminist theory. She is currently directing a research project on “Gender in the Armed Forces: Militarism and Peace-Building: Case study of Congo-Kinshasa and Mozambique.”, funded by SIDA/Sarec- Sweden. Her recent publications include Naming Security - Constructing Identity: Mayan Women in Guatemala on the Eve of Peace (August 2005), Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK; Feminist Methodologies for International Relations co-edited with Brooke Ackerly and Jacqui True (forthcoming), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: UK.; “The Scripting of Private Jessica Lynch- Biopolitics, Gender and the `Feminization´ of the U.S. Military” with Véronique Pin-Fat, Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance, V. 30, #1 (2005).