Dr Ewa K. Strzelecka is a transdisciplinary scholar and award-winning author with expertise that transcends the disciplinary boundaries between political science, social anthropology, international relations, migration, peace, and gender studies. Holding a PhD in Social and Political Science, she has nearly two decades of international experience at the intersection of academic research, policy advisory, and practice across the Global South and Global North, including work in fragile states and conflict-affected regions such as Yemen, Western Sahara, and Palestine.

Her research focuses on gender, war-generated diasporas, and peacebuilding, examining how participation, leadership, and influence evolve through women’s engagement and disengagement in peace processes and transnational activism.

She is currently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wrocław, Poland, and an Associate Fellow at the German think tank Centre for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient . Previously, she held academic positions at universities in Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, including the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she led the EU-funded research project Rethinking Peacebuilding: Women, Revolution, Exile and Conflict Resolution in Yemen (2021–2024).

She has held visiting fellowships in more than fifteen countries, including teaching at the Indian Institute of Management in Rohtak, serving as an external PhD examiner at the University of Zululand in South Africa, and leading research projects at the University of Sana’a in Yemen, SOAS University of London, and the Real Colegio Complutense at Harvard University.

Beyond academia, she has provided high-level expertise on the Women, Peace and Security agenda and gender justice for governments, UN agencies, and NGOs, including UNDP, OSESGY, UNDEF, GIZ, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and the Club de Madrid.

She is an active member of several feminist and peace research networks, including the EU COST Action Peace Research Community Europe (PEACE), the Dutch Peace and Conflict Studies Network, and the Spanish research group Africaines.

Her research has received recognition through numerous awards and distinctions from the Spanish National Research Council, the Spanish Ministry of the Presidency’s Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies, the Spanish Association of Political Science, and the University of Granada.

Her expertise and research interests encompass conflict and peacebuilding, the Women, Peace and Security agenda, gender-responsive diplomacy, feminist foreign policy, leadership and women’s rights movements, refugees and forced migration, gender and social justice, mediation, revolutions, and the complexities of socio-political change in and beyond the Middle East and North Africa, with a particular focus on Yemen and the Yemeni diaspora.

Selected publications:

• “Navigating Marginalization in Peace Processes: The Engagement and Disengagement of Yemeni Women Activists in the Diaspora.” Special Issue on Resisting Marginalization in Times of Crisis: Intersectional Approaches to the Politics of Marginalization and Resilience in Yemen, Middle East Law and Governance (forthcoming, 2025).
• “Women’s Participation and the Politics of War and Peace in Yemen.” In Yemen at a Crossroads: What Remains of Arabia Felix?, edited by Stephan Reiner and Alexander Weissenburger. Vienna: Federal Ministry of Defence, 2024, 115–129.
• “Gender, Nationalism and Revolution in Western Sahara: Women’s Participation in the Polisario State-Movement.” Revista de Estudios Internacionales Mediterráneos 35 (2023): 116–138.
• Mujeres en la Primavera Árabe: construcción de una cultura política de resistencia feminista en Yemen [Women in the Arab Spring: The Construction of a Political Culture of Feminist Resistance in Yemen]. Madrid: Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), 2017.