ISBN: 978-1-80037-394-5
Inger Skjelsbæk
University of Oslo & PRIO
Part of a series on multidisciplinary movements in research, this book has a clear and timely focus on how gender shapes knowledge production across disciplines. Its central ambition is to demonstrate how gender ‘plays out in, and informs, the work of diverse disciplines’ (p. 1), rather than to offer new gender theory or to position gender research itself as a transdisciplinary field. Organized around key thematic entry points – everyday practice, power and politics, gendered histories, bodies and embodiment, and law – several chapters examine how disciplines are gendered and how they generate knowledge about gender. These sections illuminate the mutual constitution of disciplinary tools and gendered epistemologies, illustrating how assumptions about gender become embedded in research questions, methods, and interpretations. A particular strength of the book is its accessible style which makes it suitable for scholars and students across the natural, social, and humanistic sciences. The authors claim that gender analysis is not the preserve of a single field but a resource for a wide range of scholarly inquiries. The volume also engages with current and urgent issues, including the rapid development of artificial intelligence, global pandemics, and increasing political fragmentation. It demonstrates the analytical value and practical necessity of gender-sensitive, multidisciplinary approaches for understanding contemporary transformations and crises. This book will be of interest not only to researchers working explicitly on gender, but to anyone concerned with multidisciplinary knowledge production and with how power, inequality, and embodiment shape what counts as legitimate knowledge. For peace and conflict scholars, it offers useful conceptual and methodological insights into how gendered epistemologies underpin both violent and peaceful social orders, as well as the research practices used to study them.