Researchers

Ann Towns

Ann Towns, Principal Investigator of the GenDip program, is professor of political science in the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg (link to website). 

Professor Towns’ research probes questions about norms, international hierarchies and gender in diplomacy and in foreign policy. With generous and prestigious grants – including two Wallenberg Academy Fellowships 2014-2026 and several grants from the Swedish and Norwegian Research Councils – she created the GenDip program and has advanced a research agenda on gender and diplomacy. This work has been recognized by several awards from the International Studies Association: a 2018 Bertha Lutz Prize, a 2025 Women’s Caucus Susan Northcutt Award, and a 2026 Diplomatic Studies Distinguished Scholar Award. 

Towns is the author of Imperial, Familial and Bureaucratic: Gender Logics of Bilateral Diplomacy, forthcoming with Oxford University Press. She is currently also completing a monograph on the uneven implementation of feminist foreign policy, co-authored with Katarzyna Jezierska. Towns’ other diplomacy-related publications include the co-edited Gendering Diplomacy and International Cooperation (2018, Palgrave MacMillan, with Karin Aggestam) and journal articles in Review of International Studies, International Affairs, Cooperation & Conflict and more. 

Katarzyna Jezierska 

Katarzyna Jezierska is deputy director of the GenDip program and professor of political science at University West (link to website).

Her GenDip-related research focuses on the intersection of foreign policy and diplomacy with civil society, both in terms of how civil society organizations (CSOs) interact with diplomats and try to shape the gender contents of foreign policy and in terms of how diplomats try to steer CSOs in different directions. This research has been funded by several grants from the Swedish Research Council.

Jezierska is currently completing a monograph on the uneven implementation of feminist foreign policy, co-authored with Ann Towns. She is also writing on the gendered character of care in diplomacy. Her previous publications on diplomacy and foreign policy have appeared in journals such as Review of International Studies, International Affairs, and Cooperation & Conflict.

Haley McEwen

Haley McEwen is an Assistant Lecturer in International Affairs at University West (link to website). She was a post-doctoral researcher with the Gender and Diplomacy program from 2022-2025. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in 2018 and has a formal affiliation with the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies as a Research Associate. 

McEwen’s current research program, ‘Gender and Sexuality Politics in a Transforming International Order’, builds on the research she conducted during her postdoctoral fellowship with GenDip. Funded by a 5-year grant from the Swedish Research Council, the program examines how anti-gender discourses and political agendas are influencing contemporary geopolitical (re)alignments. The program also involves the creation of an open access Rights Regimes Observatory, which will enable comparative, longitudinal, and multiscalar analysis of expansions and restrictions of gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights at national and international levels. 

McEwen’s research has been published in several international journals including Politics and Gender,  Journal of Gender Studies, Culture, Health, and Sexuality, Third World Quarterly, and Politique Africaine. She also published a monograph, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21^st Century Africa (Palgrave, 2023).  McEwen also serves as Associate Editor for the European Journal of Women’s Studies and is on the Advisory Board of the International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies. 

Monika de Silva

Monika de Silva is an Anna Ahrenberg Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Political Science, where she leads an individual research project on the geopolitics of postcolonial justice (link to website).

She previously held a research position in the Gender and Diplomacy program (GenDip) from 2021 to 2026. During this time, she completed her doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Ann Towns, Marina Nistotskaya, and Katarzyna Jezierska, and defended her PhD in Political Science in April 2025. The dissertation examined the role of diplomacy in polarization over gender and sexuality issues in Europe, drawing on fieldwork conducted on bilateral diplomacy in Warsaw and multilateral negotiations in the Council of the European Union in Brussels. Her broader research at GenDip addressed gender in the European Union's external representation as well as illiberal gender politics amid a shifting international order.De Silva's work has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, the European Journal of International Relations, the Journal of European Public Policy, and Politics & Governance, among other venues.

In addition to her doctorate, she holds an Advanced MA in EU International Relations and Diplomacy from the College of Europe, and a Master of Law from the University of Warsaw, earned through an interdisciplinary programme in the humanities and social sciences. She has gained professional experience across diplomatic institutions, including the European External Action Service, the Council of Europe, and the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Birgitta Niklasson

Birgitta Niklasson, researcher in the GenDip program, is an associate professor and a senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. After having received her PhD from that same department in 2005, she did her postdoc at the Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (Score) at Stockholm University, a project that was financed by the Swedish Research Council (VR). The postdoc was followed by the three year-long research project “The Government’s Gatekeepers”, for which Niklasson was the Principal Investigator. The project was financed by the Swedish Research Council For Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE).

Niklasson’s research focuses on issues related to gender and careers in political and administrative contexts. She takes a particular interest in the way networks, politicization, and different kinds of resistance influence women’s career development. Her current research project aims at studying to what extent the work of Swedish ambassadors is gendered and what consequences this might have for inter-state relations. Niklasson also does research on the degree of politicization of the civil service and how a growing politicization may affect the policy process.

Niklasson’s work has appeared journals such as Public Administration, West European Politics, and Foreign Policy Analysis.

Visiting Scholars, Advisory Boards, Assistants & Interns