Description
Traditional conflict research in International Studies has often prioritised state-level and elite perspectives, leaving the everyday experiences of women at the margins. As the discipline looks to its future, there is a need for creative methodologies that centre marginalised voices and reflect diverse, lived realities.
This paper proposes a feminist and creative reimagining of conflict research, drawing on participatory and visual methods that foreground emotion, humour, and memory. Creative approaches, I argue, not only broaden what International Studies can study but also how it studies, challenging hierarchical and exclusionary modes of knowledge production.
Using my photo-elicitation research in Northern Ireland as a case study, I examine how participants’ engagement with stills from the series Derry Girls reveals alternative understandings of memory and conflict. Their reflections show how popular media and comedy can mediate memory, foster intergenerational dialogue, and create space for emotional engagement with difficult pasts.
By integrating feminist, creative, and participatory methods, this paper demonstrates how conflict research can be more collaborative and innovative. It argues that centring gendered experiences and everyday perspectives expands the boundaries of knowledge and redefines what counts as research in International Studies.
