Staff Profile

I joined Newcastle University in January 2024 as a Lecturer in the Politics of Gender. I am a feminist researcher exploring the politics of war, peace and militarism. My research is grounded in ethnographic methods, and I have regional expertise in South Asia, specifically Nepal where I have done extensive field research. I am interested in questions of agency, family, affect and emotions, and subaltern politics.

My work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Security Dialogue, International Political Sociology, Civil Wars, Review of International Studies, and Journal of Human Security. I have also co-created and co-produced the podcast series Women at War and Its Aftermath.

Prior to joining Newcastle I was engaged in several postdoctoral projects, including though my ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at King’s College London, the UKRI-funded ‘Civil War Paths’ project at University of York, and the ‘Legacies of the Disappeared project’ at the LSE Gender, Justice and Security Hub. I received my PhD in International Relations from King’s College London in 2017, where my thesis focused on women’s political agency in the context of peacebuilding in post-conflict Nepal. 

My ethnographically grounded research agenda explores the politics of war and peace, centering feminist, and subaltern perspectives. My regional expertise is South Asia, specifically Nepal where I have done extensive field research. My aim is to offer critical insights into questions of agency and family to shed new light on how we understand war.

Post-war expressions of political agency   

My work has explored women’s political agency across war and post-war contexts. This has involved extensive field research in Nepal, focusing on experiences of women ex-PLA fighters and women activists mobilising around enforced disappearances. My work explores heterogeneous modalities of political agency including their relational and affective dimensions. My work on agency has been published in Security Dialogue, Journal of Human Security, and Civil Wars.

I am currently writing up my book manuscript ‘Subaltern Politics in Post-War times: Rethinking Feminist Theories of Agency’. The book sheds new light on issues of political agency and the question of what forms of agency matter. Theoretically, it reconceptualises ‘subaltern’ political agency for post-war contexts. Empirically, it offers a thick ethnographic analysis of heterogeneous modes of political agency, which allows me to move beyond sets of binaries that tend to frame agency in feminist and critical analysis.

Familial ties, militarism and affect

Another strand of my research explores the role of family and familial ties in war and its aftermath. I explore familial ties as ‘affective ties’ that emerge through and are transformed by war’s violence. This research has included conducting life history interviews with people who participated in the Maoist movement in Nepal as fighters, political organisers and artists. Part of this ongoing research has been published in Civil Wars. I have also published on questions of militarism and affect and on ‘parental harm’ in co-written articles in International Political Sociology and Review of International Studies. 

POL8006: Theories of International Relations

• Articles

  • Friedman R, Ketola H. Violations of the heart: Parental harm in war and oppression. Review of International Studies 2024, 50(2), 393-412.
  • Ketola H. Familial Ties as a Gendered Relationality in Civil War: Militarisation, Violence and Politics. Civil Wars 2023, ePub ahead of Print.
  • Riley H, Ketola H, Yadav P. Gender, populism and collective identity: a feminist analysis of the Maoist movement in Nepal. Journal of Human Security 2022, 18(2), 35-46.
  • Ketola, H. Withdrawing from Politics? Gender, Agency and Women ex-Fighters in Nepal. Security Dialogue 2020, 51(6), 519–536. In Preparation.
  • Chisholm, A, Ketola, H. The Cruel Optimism of Militarism: Feminist Curiosity, Affect, and Global Security. International Political Sociology 2020, 14(3), 270–285.