Project rationale
Started in 2014, this research studies a core societal challenge: building peaceful and socially just societies. Linked to the research project on Peacebuilding, Social Justice and Education in Aceh, this Female Education Leaders project also studies the education sector in Aceh, increasingly recognized as a crucial sector for sustainable transformations of post-conflict and post-disaster societies. More specifically, the key aim of this research is to understand the intersection of gender and religion in shaping the agency of female education leaders in processes of peacebuilding and social/gender justice in post-conflict and post-tsunami Aceh, Indonesia.
By doing this, the research takes an inter-disciplinary approach, combining insights and approaches mainly derived from International Development Studies, Conflict Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Political Sciences/International Relations, Comparative and International Education and Gender Studies. Building on a critical realist stance, analysis will be informed by the Strategic Relational Approach (SRA) as developed by Jessop (2005) and Hay (2002), and applied to study education and education actors’ agency specifically (Lopes Cardozo 2009, 2011). The research uses a dialectical approach to understand the agency of female educational leaders in relation to a transformation or reproduction of the post-conflict and post-disaster educational and socio-political Acehnese context at different scales.
Dayah boarding schools: links between education, religion, and fostering peace
This study will focus on the Dayah boarding schools (in other parts of Indonesia also called Pesantren) that are located in conflict-affected areas. There is a general lack of research on these Islamic boarding schools in the context of Aceh, and more broadly in Indonesia. More specifically, the study explores the grassroots roles and agency of female education leaders and activists in establishing or potentially reproducing a context of inequality and tensions. The study engages with the close link between education and religion in these Dayah, and how an Islamic perception of education’s role in fostering peace, understanding and social justice is conceptualised and enacted.
Research outputs:
This webpage will be continuously updated with recent research outputs.
- Lopes Cardozo, M.T.A. & Shah, R.A. (2016) ‘The fruit caught between two stones’: the conflicted position of teachers within Aceh’s independence struggle’, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 14(3), pp. 331 – 344.
- Lopes Cardozo, M.T.A, Srimulyani, E., Irawani, M. and Affiat, R. (2014) Women, Leadership and Peacebuilding Education: a Complex Spectrum of Female Dayah Leaders’ Agency in Aceh, Conference Paper for ICAIOS V conference, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, 18 November 2014.
This research is conducted in close collaboration with the International Centre for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies (IACIOS).
For more information, please contact the project leader: Mieke Lopes Cardozo (mlopescardozo@fmg.uva.nl).
