Julia Wartmann gratuated with a BA in social and cultural anthropology and Arabic from the University in Zurich. While completing an MSc in international relations of the Middle East with Arabic from the University of Edinburgh, she spent a trimester at Bir Zeit University. She obtained her PhD in political science from the University of Basel with a thesis on the gender-equality reforms in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Her work, which investigates how freedom can reinforce gender binaries, is situated at the intersection of International Relations and Gender Studies. 

Activities

In addition to my academic pursuits, I have experience with intersectional feminist activism as a co-founder of the “Telefon Gegen Gewalt (TGG)”. Co-founding this hotline for FLINTA people, who are in a situation of violence, have legal questions about their residence status, or just need an open ear, has afforded me insights into the sexualised-racialised hierarchies within the Swiss migration system and considerably shaped my thinking about discourses around ‘multiculturalism’ and its effects on minoritised people’s lives. 

Publications: 

• Wartmann, Julia. 2023. “Negotiating what it means to be “free”: gender equality and governance in North and East Syria.” International Feminist Journal of Politics, DOI: 10.1080/14616742.2023.2269154 
• Forthcoming: “What do you think she meant?” Proxy-Interviewing as ethnographic Methodology and Solidarity.” In Doing gender studies – producing knowledge otherwise edited by, Dina Bolokan, Anukriti Dixit, Melina Rutishauser and Julia Wartmann. Zurich: Seismo Press. 
• Forthcoming: “Practising Utopia – Governing Effects of Democratic Confederalist Discourse in North and East Syria” In Utopianism in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Thomas Pierret and Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 
• Wartmann, Julia. “Women’s Rights in Northeast Syria: Enforcing Gender Equality.” Gender Campus (blog). December 2022.