Fifth seminar 
Institutional Constructions of Gender: Addressing Violence, Identity, and Mental Health 

June 11th, 2025 
To join the seminar, please click here. 

Diana Malaj 
Center for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz (Austria) 
Beyond carceral feminism? Contextualising feminist discourses in domestic and sexualised violence in Kosovo and Albania. 
In the last two decades, there has been extensive research and heated debate on the tensions between carceral and anti-carceral responses to gendered violence within feminist movements. Disagreements about how to respond to gendered violence are often due to the existing multiplicity of the feminist approaches but also due to the different socio-economic and political contexts in which such violence takes place. At the same time, different conceptions of the state and community also impact on feminist mobilisation around these issues in particular contexts. In this presentation, the presenter (Diana Malaj) will focus on the tensions between so-called carceral feminism and abolitionist feminism in the context of Albania and Kosova. Based on interviews with feminist activists and academics about the ways in which they understand gendered violence, the strategies and interventions they deem most relevant in addressing it, and about the contradictions and tensions that exist in their discourses and practices, our aim is to offer a critique to carceral feminism, while illustrating the reasons and the lack of alternatives that has impeded a transformative imagination towards abolitionist feminism. 

Chanapang Pongpiboonkiat 
University of Leeds (UK) 
Uncomfortable, But Do It Anyway: A Reflexive Journey on Researching the Mediated Construction of Gendered Military Identities as a Former Military Woman. 
Feminist scholarship describes the military as a (deeply) gendered institution, in which masculine ideals play a crucial role in the institutional structure, policies, beliefs, and norms. Therefore, the integration of women into the military is bound to face challenges. This presentation focuses on my positionality as a former Thai air force officer, to make sense of my military service time as well as that of other women, with feminist curiosity (Enloe, 2004;2017) employed as a central theme of my PhD research. With this curiosity, I was driven by my own questioning about patriarchal effects in military women’s everyday lives, particularly when male-dominated beliefs and practices become normalised and internalised within a militarised culture. Furthermore, I will explain a mixed-methods research design which enabled empirical insights to come through. These include content analysis and critical discourse analysis of Thai news media, and in-depth interviews of 31 Thai military women with the use of the photo elicitation technique when discussing their Facebook posts. The findings pointed to women’s attempt to negotiate for their visibility, and (re)construct their gendered military identities in both offline and social media settings in order to establish a sense of self and belonging. 

Lorna Pepperill 
University of Cambridge (UK) 
Gendered Symptoms: Femininity, Experience and NHS ‘Talking Therapies’. 
Defined as a disturbance in emotional regulation, the comprehension of mental illness rests upon social conceptions of the norm. The structurally prominent role of gender in the social milieu renders it a critical influence in the construction of shared, social principles. Thus, it is logical to assume that descriptive gender norms and stereotyping influence the professional comprehension of mental health symptoms and treatment. Development of academic literacy exploring this relationship is still in its infancy and, consequently, gender’s effect on experiences of diagnostic evaluation and treatment remains unascertained. This thesis aims to close these gaps by analysing the prominence of descriptive gender stereotyping in ‘NHS Talking Therapies’ – the largest public mental health service in the UK – and how this affects treatment for depressive and/or anxiety disorders. Personal experiences have been explored through walking interviews, mirroring the increasingly popular ‘walk and talk’ variety of therapy. Insights from these conversations are central to conclusions; the nature of mental health as an individualised experience requires that the personal voice is elevated in research narratives. Overall, results highlight how descriptive gender norms are not simply an external force, but rather, are intrinsically woven within the medical, social and experiential understanding of mental disorders.