This guest lecture examined how dominant paradigms of security governance rely on and reproduce colonial logics. It argues that dominant security paradigms rely on colonial gendered narratives to legitimize interventionist practices and sustain global asymmetries of power rooted in imperial histories. As feminist researchers it is key to ask the following questions: whose interventions are legitimized through narratives of saving women or promoting gender equality? To what degree is it even possible to disrupt colonial and imperial legacies in security policies?
First, the lecture explored how gender is instrumentalized in security narratives that depict the Global South as a space of crisis and disorder. These narratives often rely on stereotypical representations of vulnerable women and violent men, which serve to justify external control, militarized responses, and surveillance. Rather than challenging existing power structures, such gendered framings often reinforce them.
Second, it unpacked how assumptions on what peace means for who sustain colonial hierarchies by presenting Global North actors as saviours and knowledge-bearers, while marginalizing the agency and epistemologies of those most affected by conflict and insecurity. Through technocratic and depoliticized approaches, international institutions often obscure the historical and structural roots of violence.
Finally, the lecture interrogated how local and Indigenous resistance practices are co-opted, silenced, or rendered invisible within dominant security frameworks. Feminist and decolonial struggles are frequently absorbed into policy discourses in ways that neutralize their transformative potential.
By centring the logics of coloniality, the lecture invited the audience to critically reflect on the epistemological and political limits of mainstream gender and security frameworks and to explore alternative visions of peace and justice grounded in intersectional and decolonial feminist thought.
More information can be found on the CEU's website.