Profile

PhD, The American University

Faculty member since 2009 and former Deputy Director of the Graduate Institute from 2010 to 2014, Professor Prügl directs the Institute’s Gender Centre. In the course of her academic career in the US and Switzerland her research and teaching have focused on gender politics in international governance. 

She has published extensively on issues including atypical forms of women’s labour and their international regulation, the neoliberalization of feminism, and on gender expertise in international governance. She currently directs two research consortia on gender and land grabs, and gender and peacebuilding, with partners from Nigeria, Ghana, Cambodia, and Indonesia, funded by the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d). 

Professor Prügl serves on the editorial boards of International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, International Feminist Journal of Politics, and the European Journal of Politics and Gender. In 2019, she received the “Eminent Scholar” award of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). 

Recent publications

• Gender in Peacebuilding: Local Practices in Indonesia and Nigeria, International Development Policy. Revue internationale de politique de développement, 13 (Geneva, Boston: Graduate Institute Publications, Brill-Nijhoff) (2021). Free pre-print
• Productive farmers and vulnerable food securers: contradictions of gender expertise in international food security discourse. The Journal of Peasant Studies (8 September 2021). Free pre-print
• Agricultural and land commercialization – feminist and rights perspectives. The Journal of Peasant Studies (4 October 2021). Free pre-print
• Kristina Lanz, Elisabeth Prügl, and Jean-David Gerber. The Poverty of Neoliberalized Feminism: Gender Equality in a 'Best Practice' Large-Scale Land Investment in Ghana. The Journal of Peasant Studies 0, no. 0 (28 May 2019): 1–19. Free pre-print
• Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay and Elisabeth Prügl, Performative Technologies: Agricultural Research for Development and Gender. International Feminist Journal of Politics (March 2019). Free pre-print
• Gender Experts and Gender Expertise (eds. Rahel Kunz and Elisabeth Prügl), Special Issue of European Journal of Politics and Gender 2,1 (February 2019), with introduction freely accessible

Selected publications

Books

• Sexual Violence against Men in Global Politics. Co-edited with Marysia Zalewski, Paula Drumond, and Maria Stern. London, Routledge, 2018.
• Feminist Strategies in International Governance. Co-edited with Gülay Çaglar and Susanne Zwingel. London: Routledge, 2013.
• Transforming Masculine Domination: Agriculture and Rural Development in the European Union. University of Michigan Press. Nominated for the Columbia Seminar on Modern Europe, 2011-2012 series, 2011.
• Diversity and the European Union. Co-edited with Markus Thiel. New York: Palgrave, 2009.
• The Global Construction of Gender: Home-Based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Articles

• The Poverty of Neoliberalized Feminism: Gender Equality in a “Best Practice” Large-scale Land Investment in Ghana, with Kristina Lanz and Jean-David Gerber. Journal of Peasant Studies (online May 28, 2019): 1-19. DOI 10.1080/03066150.2019.1602525.
• Performative Technologies: Agricultural Research for Development and Gender, with Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay. International Feminist Journal of Politics (online February 2019): DOI 10.1080/14616742.2018.1555004.
• Gender Expertise in Global Governance: Contesting the Boundaries of a Field, with Rahel Kunz and Hayley Thompson. European Journal of Politics and Gender 2, 1 (February 2019): 23-40. DOI 10.1332/251510819X15471289106112
• Feminist International Relations: Some Research Agendas for a World in Transition. European Journal of Politics and Gender 1,1 (June 2018), with J. Ann Tickner.
• Neoliberalism with a Feminist Face: Crafting a New Hegemony at the World Bank. Feminist Economics 23, 1: 30-53 (Online 13 July 2016. DOI: 10.1080/1345701.2016.1198043).
• Neoliberalising Feminism. New Political Economy 20, 4 (August 2015): 614-631. (Online 24 September 2014. DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951614).
• Equality Means Business: Governing Gender through Public-Private Partnerships. Review of International Political Economy 21, 6 (2014): 1137-1167, with Jacqui True. Online DOI 10.1080/09692290.2013.849277.
• International Feminist Politics: Introduction. Politics and Gender 9, 3 (September 2013): 329-336.
• Feminism and the Figure of Man. International Studies Review 14, 4 (December 2012): 656-660.
• “If Lehman Brothers had Been Lehman Sisters …”: Gender and Myth in the Aftermath of the Financial Crisis. International Political Sociology 6 (March 2012): 21-35.
• "Diversity Management and Gender Mainstreaming as Technologies of Government," Politics & Gender, volume 7, issue 01, (2011): 71-89.
• "Feminism and the Postmodern State: Gender Mainstreaming in European Rural Development," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 32, 2 (Winter 2010).
• "Does Gender Mainstreaming Work? Feminist Engagements with the German Agricultural State," International Feminist Journal of Politics 11, 2 (May 2009): 174-195.
• "Gender Orders in German Agriculture: From the Patriarchal Welfare State to Liberal Environmentalism," Sociologia Ruralis 44, 4 (October 2004): 349-372.
• "Gender and War: Causes, Constructions, and Critique," Perspectives on Politics 1 (June 2003): 335-342.
• "Feminism and Constructivism: Worlds Apart or Sharing the Middle Ground?" with Birgit Locher, International Studies Quarterly 45, 1 (March 2001): 111-129.

Book Chapters

• Gender Experts in International Governance: Mapping the Contours of a Field, with Hayley Thompson. In Expertes en genre et connaissances feminists sur le développement. Qui sait? ed. Christine Verschuur, pp. 89-112. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2017.
• Social Mechanisms: A Methodological Tool for Feminist IR. In The Art of World Making: Nicholas Greenwood Onuf and his Critics, ed. Harry Gould, pp. 160-171. Routledge, 2017. 
• Social Responsibility and the Neoliberalisation of Feminism. In Gender Equality and Responsible Business; Expanding CSR Horizons, eds. Lauren McCarthy, Kate Grosser, and Maureen Kilgour. Greenleaf, 2016
• “’Lehman Brothers and Sister’: Revisiting Gender and Myth Five Years after the Financial Crisis.” In Scandalous Economics: Gender and the Politics of Financial Crises, eds. Aida A. Hozic and Jacqui True. Oxford University Press, 2006.
• “How to Wield Feminist Power.” In The Politics of Feminist Knowledge Transfer: Exploring Gender Training and Gender Mainstreaming, eds. María Bustelo, Lucy Ferguson, and Maxime Forest. Palgrave, 2016.
• “Feminism and the Figure of Man.” In Man, Agency and Beyond: The Evolution of Human Nature in International Relations, eds. Daniel Jacobi and Annette Freyberg-Inan. Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 172-191
• “Feminist Interventions in International Relations.” In Under Development: Gender, eds. Isabelle Guérin, Hélène Guétat, and Christine Verschuur. London: Palgrave. 2014.
• “Formen männlicher Dominanz in der deutschen Landwirtschaft: Ein Ost-West Vergleich.” In Frauen am Land: Potentiale und Perspektiven, eds. Theresia Ödl-Wieser, Gertraud Seiser, and Mathilde Schmitt, pp. 232-244. Innsbruck/Wien/Bozen: Studienverlag, 2014.
• “Libéralisation de l’economie et transformation de la domination masculine dans l’agriculture allemand.” In Féminin-masculin, genre et agricultures familiales, ed. Hélène Guetat-Bernard, pp. 137-150. Versailles Cedex: Édition Quae, 2014.
• “Gender Expertise as Feminist Strategy.” In Feminist Strategies in International Governance, eds. G. Caglar, E. Prügl, and S. Zwingel, pp. 57-73. London: Routledge, 2013.
• “The Common Agricultural Policy and Gender Equality.” In Gendering the EU, eds. Gabriele Abels and Joyce Mushaben, pp. 127-145. Palgrave, 2012.
• "Gendered Knowledge in the Postmodern State: The Case of Agricultural Trade Liberalization in Europe." In The Role of Gender Knowledge and Knowledge Networks in International Political Economy, eds. Brigitte Young and Christoph Scherrer. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag. 2010.