RS seminar: The politics of intimacy—women’s friendships and the implications for peacebuilding

Abstract

Women’s friendships across and beyond ‘conflict-borders’ mediate precarious, often dangerous territory. These hard-to-define alliances have been typically ignored, both theoretically and materially, and accorded little substantial political weight or influence in national and international narratives of peacebuilding. 

This paper argues that these friendships are powerful models of collaborative and productive alliances, that they enable a deep understanding of an ‘other’s’ life experience, that they are robust even through upsurges of conflict violence, and that they are sustainable over the long-term. These discourses, doctrines and personal stories are mobilised to substantiate the claim that friendships between women of faith offer a model for efficacious peacebuilding ‘across borders’, and that, as an everyday practice they are an essential component to generating present, and sustaining future, peace. 

Speaker

Dr Lindsay Simmonds is a Research Fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS) where she has lectured, written and convened courses for over 20 years, focussing on women in biblical narrative, the Talmud and Jewish Law. In 2024, she completed a three year project at the Religion and Global Society Unit at the London School of Economics (LSE), UK, where she led research on Women of Faith and Peacebuilding examining the work of Israeli and Palestinian women peacebuilders. 

In addition to her academic research and lecturing, Lindsay speaks regularly on peaceful shared society, interfaith relations and conflict negotiation. Lindsay is co-chair of her local Jewish-Muslim Women’s Network Nisa-Nashim, Vice-Chair of trustees for the Abraham Initiatives UK and Jewish Scholar-in-Residence for the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ). In 2024, she and Julie Siddiqi MBE were awarded a joint Honorary Doctorate from Middlesex University, UK in recognition of their ‘contributions and commitment to promoting interfaith understanding and engagement’. 

Series

The Religious Studies seminar is a Faculty of Divinity seminar series. The convenor this term is Dr Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz.