Dr Columba Achilleos-Sarll

Dr Columba Achilleos-Sarll

Department of Political Science and International Studies
Lecturer

Contact details

Email
c.achilleos-sarll.1@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
POLSIS - School of Government
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Columba Achilleos-Sarll is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Political Science and International Studies. Her primary research examines the United Nation’s Security Council’s ‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) agenda. More broadly, her work focuses on feminist and post/decolonial approaches to international relations, civil society and advocacy, feminist foreign policy, and visual global politics. 

Qualifications

  • PhD Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick
  • MPhil International Relations, University of Oxford
  • PGCHE Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education

Biography

Columba Achilleos-Sarll joined POLSIS in September 2021 after completing her PhD at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. Before joining Birmingham, Columba was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, an affiliated research fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP), and a visiting researcher at the Centre for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University.

Columba’s primary research examines the United Nation’s Security Council’s ‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) agenda. A strand of this research explores the UK’s implementation and institutionalisation of the agenda, focussing in particular on networked and transnational civil society. She is in the process of writing up this project for publication as a manuscript, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. Beyond the WPS agenda, Columba’s research extends to feminist foreign policy, visual global politics, and civil society, and is currently co-editing an anthology on feminist foreign policies. Her work has been published in several peer review journals and in addition has written book chapters, blogs, and opinion pieces. 

Columba's research has been nominated, shortlisted, or the recipient of several research prizes by multiple professional associations including: the 2019 ISA Global Development Studies Edward Said Award (recipient); the 2017 Feminist Studies Association Prize (shortlisted); the 2021 International Affairs Early Career Prize (shortlisted); and the Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize (nominated). In addition, in 2019, she received a Departmental Commendation for Outstanding Contribution to the PAIS Department’s Teaching at the University of Warwick and was also nominated for a Warwick Award for Postgraduates who Teach.

Teaching

  • Global History (UG)
  • Gender, Peace and Insecurity (PGT)

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Achilleos-Sarll is interested in supervising PhD students in the following areas: feminist and post/decolonial approaches to international relations; the Women, Peace and Security agenda; civil society and advocacy; visual global politics; feminist foreign policy.

Current Students

(Co-supervising with Dr Danielle Beswick) Scarlet Elliott-Vass, ESRC Studentship: ‘Sub State Translations: Exploring the Localisation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Uganda’.

Research

Research Interests

Dr Achilleos-Sarll’s research focuses on several areas:

  • The Women, Peace and Security Agenda
  • Civil society and advocacy
  • Visual global politics
  • Feminist Foreign Policy

 

Other activities

Memberships: International Studies Association (ISA); British International Studies Association (BISA)

Columba co-convenes with Dr Emma A. Foster the Gender and Feminist Theory research group, a vibrant research group hosted in POLSIS which brings together academics and students across the institution interested in gender and feminist theory.

Publications

Articles

Wright, H., and Achilleos-Sarll (2024). 'Towards an Abolitionist Feminist Peace: State Violence, Anti-Militarism, and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda'. Review of International Studies. 

Achilleos-Sarll, C. (2024). 'Reconceptualising Advocacy through the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Embodiment, Relationality, and Power’. International Political Sociology 18(1).

Achilleos-Sarll, C., Sachseder S, & Stachowitsch, S (2023). 'The (Inter-)Visual Politics of Border Security: Co-Constituting Gender and Race through Frontex's Risk Analysis', Security Dialogue. 54(4) 

Achilleos-Sarll, C (2023). 'The (Dis-)Appearance of Race in the United Kingdom's Institutionalisation and Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda'. International Studies Quarterly 67(1). 

Achilleos-Sarll, C., Thomson, J., Haastrup, T., Färber, K., Cohn, C., Kirby, P (2023). 'The Past, Present, and Future(s) of Feminist Foreign Policy'. International Studies Review 25(1).

Achilleos-Sarll, C (2020). ‘“Seeing” the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda: Exploring the Visual Reproduction of WPS through UK Government National Action Plans’, International Affairs 96(6): 1463-1663.

Achilleos-Sarll, C & Chilmeran Y (2020). ‘Interrogating the “Local” in Women, Peace and Security: Reflections on Research on and in the UK and Iraq’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 22(4): 596-605.

Achilleos-Sarll, C (2018). 'Reconceptualising Foreign Policy as Gendered, Sexualised and Racialised: Towards a Postcolonial Feminist Foreign Policy (Analysis)', Journal of International Women’s Studies 19(1): 34-49.

Chapters

Achilleos-Sarll, C (2022). “Race” and Coloniality. In Gender Matters in International Politics 3rd Edition. Edited by Laura J. Shepherd and Caitlin Hamilton. (London: Routledge 2022).

Achilleos-Sarll & Martill B (2019). ‘Toxic Masculinity: Militarism, Deal-Making and the Performance of Brexit.' In Dustin, Moira, Ferreria, Nuno, Milns, Susan (eds.) Gender and Queer Perspectives on Brexit, pp. 15-44 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Blogs & Other Public-Engagement Publications

Achilleos-Sarll, C, Stachowitsch S, & Sachseder J (2021). ‘#SecurityHasNoGender. Frontex, Border Security, and the Politics of Gender Neutrality.’

Achilleos-Sarll, C (2020). ‘Why Images Matter to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda’, International Affairs Blog – Medium.

‘Interview–Columba Achilleos-Sarll’ (2018). E-International Relations. 

Achilleos-Sarll, C (2018). ‘Gendering Boris Johnson’s Cabinet Exit’ LSE Dahrendorf Forum. 

Achilleos-Sarll, C & Galvin-Elliott A (2018). ‘Feminist Allies: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, Disorder of Things. 

Achilleos-Sarll, C (2018). ‘The WPS Agenda Requires a Complementary Approach to Foreign and Domestic Policy’, LSE WPS Blog. 

Achilleos-Sarll, C (2017). ‘Deal or No Deal: The Hypermasculinity of the ‘Businessperson as Leader’ Rhetoric’, UCL European Institute Blog. 

Achilleos-Sarll, C (2017). ‘Where are the Women at the Big Boys’ Table?’ UCL European Institute Blog. 

Book Reviews

Review of Laura J. Shepherd's Narrating the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Logics of Global Governance, International Affairs 97(4), (2021): 1257-59.

Review of Sara E. Davies & Jacqui True (eds), The Oxford Handbook on Women, Peace and Security, LSE Review of Books, (2020).

Review of Inderpal Grewal, Saving the Security State Exceptional Citizens in Twenty-First-Century-America, International Feminist Journal of Politics 20(4), (2018): 672-674.

Review of Laura J. Shepherd, ‘Gender, UN Peacebuilding, and the Politics of Space: Locating Legitimacy’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 20(2), (2018): 285-288.

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

  • Women, Peace and Security Agenda
  • Civil society and advocacy
  • Visual global politics
  • Feminist Foreign Policy