Dr Jasmine Westendorf
Co-Director of the Initiative for Peacebuilding, Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict, and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow
Dr Jasmine Westendorf is an Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict, Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow and Co-Director of the Initiative for Peacebuilding. Her research focuses on peace and humanitarian processes, particularly examining how the international community supports societies as they respond to conflict and crisis. She is interested in the negotiation of power during these processes, the role of non-state actors and women, and how international actors’ assumptions and behaviours affect their capacity and credibility in the countries where they work. Her current major project, funded by the Australian Research Council, focuses on sexual exploitation and abuse in peace and humanitarian operations; her past work has looked at the challenges to effective international involvement and inclusivity in peace processes.
Jasmine is the author of Violating peace: Sex, aid and peacekeeping (2020, Cornell University Press), Why peace processes fail: Negotiating insecurity after civil war (2015, Lynne Rienner Publishers) and co-editor of Sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping and aid: Critiquing the past, plotting the future (2024, Bristol University Press). Her articles have appeared in journals such as International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Global Studies Quarterly, Peacebuilding the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding and the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. She has undertaken field research in Timor-Leste, Cambodia, Nepal, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Poland, Moldova, Romania, Sicily, Palestine and Cyprus, and has worked with and advised a range of UN and other international organisations on issues related to peace processes and sexual exploitation and abuse.