Last Monday, April 20th, CLAS Postdoctoral Associate Dr. Vierelina Fernández gave her culminating Postdoc Research Talk to a full audience (both in-person and virtually on Zoom). Her talk centered on the theoretical advances of her current book project, tentatively titled Insurgent Feminism in Global Revolution: Lessons from Colombian and Kurdish Guerrilla Fighters. In her talk, Vierelina expanded on her conceptual framework of “war as generative process,” where she argues that war and conflict can have normatively positive impacts on gender equality. Her two case studies centered on Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in eastern Turkey. Using a mixed-methods approach (quantitative/qualitative), Dr. Fernández compared legislative speeches and official party communiqués by the formal political wings of each armed insurgency. Ultimately, her work concludes that the Middle Eastern PKK, and its formal political wing, are measurably more gender progressive than the Latin American FARC, likely as a result of both the PKK’s ongoing conflict (at the time of data collection) as well as the more hierarchical authoritarian leadership structures of the Kurdish party and guerrilla.
Vierelina Fernández is the 2024-2026 Postdoctoral Associate at Rutgers University's Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS). Her work focuses on feminist IR, gendered security, insurgency, and Latin America-Middle East comparative politics. Vierelina obtained her Ph.D. in International Relations from Florida International University (FIU). At Rutgers, she teaches “Intro to Latin America” and “Politics and Violence in Latin America.”
