Dr. Emma Swan

Office hours

 Fall 2026 term: Wednesdays 2:30-3:30 PM or by appointment

Interests

• Critical peace, security and peacebuilding
• Resistance and contentious politics (Middle East; especially Palestine)
• Feminist International Relations
• Feminist epistemologies and research methodologies
• Palestine/Israel and the Middle East
• Critical border studies
• Global development policy and practice
• Epistemic struggles/violence
• Canadian foreign policy
• Politics of the everyday

About Dr. Swan

Emma Swan holds an MA in Human Security and Peacebuilding from Royal Roads University (2014) and a PhD in International Development and Global Studies from the University of Ottawa (2022). She is a limited-term assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria where she teaches in the field of international relations. Prior to joining the department, Dr. Swan was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria (2023-2025), a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Ottawa (2022-2023); and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2018-2019).

Dr. Swan’s research sits at the intersection of international relations, peace and conflict studies, critical development, feminist theory, resistance studies, and Middle East politics. Across her work, she is interested in how power operates through narrative, discourse, and representation, and how these dynamics shape the everyday lives of people living under conditions of occupation, displacement, international intervention, and violence. Her research asks how dominant international frameworks make certain political realities visible while obscuring others, and how people navigate, resist, appropriate, or unsettle those frameworks in order to preserve agency and political meaning.

Her earlier work examined Palestinian unarmed resistance in the West Bank, focusing on Orientalism, liberal peacebuilding, masculinities, and the politics of representation. This research explored less visible forms of resistance, including strategic silence, hidden transcripts, and narrative adaptation, and asked how Palestinians navigate unequal power relations while re-narrating their struggle to international audiences. More broadly, her published work examines the friction between international, state-centric, and donor-driven frameworks and locally grounded understandings of peace, resistance, development, security, and justice.

Her current research extends these questions into two new projects. The first, The Sumud Files, is part of a broader project on archiving life in communities affected by mass violence. Focused on everyday life in Gaza, the project examines how family photographs, oral histories, mobile phone images and videos, and neighbourhood memories can preserve the everyday worlds that attempted erasure seeks to make disappear. It approaches these materials as records of identity, presence, and continuity; traces through which communities protect life-worlds, sustain self-narration, transmit identity, and imagine futures in contexts of mass violence and genocide. In doing so, the project asks how ethical digital archiving can support memory, heritage-building, and community-led preservation in ways attentive to ownership, access, representation, and care.

Her second current project examines Palestinian diasporic life and Turkish solidarity activism in Istanbul. Through fieldwork with Palestinian diasporic actors and Turkish flotilla activists, the project explores how borders are remembered, narrated, contested, and lived at a distance. Drawing on scholarship on epistemic borderwork and Rumford’s questions of “who borders” and “where are borders,” it examines how diasporic communities and solidarity actors participate in producing border knowledge. In doing so, the project approaches borders not as formations managed only by states, but as political and epistemic terrains shaped by civil society actors through memory practices, advocacy, solidarity, and transnational resistance.

Alongside her academic research, Dr. Swan works as a consultant and researcher with international NGOs, specializing in the humanitarian–development–peace nexus, governance, gender, and peacebuilding in conflict-affected settings. Her work bridges academic research with policy and practice, and is grounded in a commitment to critical, reflexive, and community-attentive approaches to international relations.

Teaching

Dr. Swan teaches courses on international relations, resistance, the United Nations, Canadian foreign policy, and global development.

Fall 2026

• POLI 341- United Nations and Global Issues
• POLI 346 - Canadian Foreign Policy

Spring 2027

• POLI 240 - Conflict and Cooperation in International Politics
• POLI 341 - United Nations and Global Issues
• POLI 349 - Issues in International Relations: "Politics of Resistance"

Previous courses taught:

• GDS 202: Contemporary Issues in Global Development Studies
• POLI 328 Gender and International Relations

Publications

 Works in progress:

• Swan, E., Finnsdottir, M. & Soupault, J. Constellation of Truths:L Non-state Actors and Epistemic Borderwork. Preparing to submit to Routledge.
• Swan, E. Birds Without Wings: An Exploration into the Relationship Between Orientalism, Liberal Peacebuilding, Resistance, and Masculinities in the West Bank. Preparing to submit to Oxford University Press. (Developed from doctoral dissertation).
• Swan, E. A History of Violence: Exploring the Militarization of Masculinities in Times of Peace. Preparing to submit to International Feminist Journal of Politics.
• Swan, E. Constellation of Truths in a Diasporic Borderland: Epistemic Borderwork and the Politics of Return, Belonging, and Resistance in Istanbul. Single-authored chapter in co-authored book manuscript, Constellation of Truths: Non-State Actors and Epistemic Borderwork.

Journal Articles:

• Swan, E., Soupault, J. & Finnsdottir, M. (Accepted). Constellation of Truths Special Section Introduction- Constellation of Truths: Towards a Conceptualization of the Epistemic Struggles of (Un)civil Society Actors in Border(lands), Space and Polity.
• Finsdottir, M., Soupault, J., & Swan, E. (Under Review). A “constellation of (ignored) truths”: Using network analyses to understand the reach and influence of (un)civil society-authored border reports. Geoforum.
• Donkoh, J. A., Swan, E., & Tiessen, R. (2025). Expanding our understanding of wellbeing: exploring feminist flourishing as a conceptual framework. Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue Canadienne d’études Du Développement,, 46(4), 554–573. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2025.2560825
• Tiessen, R., Donkoh, J. A., & Swan, E. (2025). Introduction to feminist flourishing and wellbeing in international development: conceptual and empirical insights, Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue Canadienne d’études Du Développement, 46(4), 551–553. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.1080/02255189.2025.2527740
• Swan, E. (2022). Occupied by non-violence: Exploring male Palestinian resistance activists’ use of strategic silences in (re) narrating the Palestinian struggle. International Journal (Toronto), 77(4), 592–614. https://doi.org/10.1177/00207020231166576
• Wildeman, J., & Swan, E. (2021). What lies ahead? Canada’s engagement with the Middle East Peace Process and the Palestinians: an Introduction. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 27(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/11926422.2021.1888761
• Swan, E. (2021). “The personal is political!”: exploring the limits of Canada’s feminist international assistance policy under occupation and blockade. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 27(1), 117–135. https://doi.org/10.1080/11926422.2020.1805340

Books and Special Issues:

• Swan, E., Soupault, J. & Finnsdottir, M. (Accepted). Constellation of truths: Towards a Conceptualization of the Epistemic Struggles of (Un)civil Society Actors in Border(lands), Space and Polity.
• Tiessen, R., Swan, E., & Donkoh, A. (2025). ‘Feminist Flourishing' as an Alternative Lens for Understanding Development and Wellbeing, Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue Canadienne d’études Du Développement (Special Issue), Eds. Rebecca Tiessen, Emma Swan, Ayewa Donkoh &.
• Wildeman, J. & Swan, E. (2024). What Lies Ahead? Canada’s Engagement with the Middle East Peace Process and the Palestinians. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781032190624.
• Wildeman, J. & Swan, E. (2021). What Lies Ahead? Canada’s Engagement with the Middle East Peace Process and the Palestinians. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (Thematic Issue), Eds., Jeremy Wildman and Emma Swan, 27(1).

Book chapters:

• Swan, E., Leech-Ngo, P. & El Husseini, F. (In Press). Chapter 5: Canada, Israel-Palestine and Multilateralism: Three Phases. In Reem Badhi (Ed.), Canada and the Unmaking of Palestine. (pp.110-126). Vancouver: UBC Press.
• Tiessen, R. & Swan. E. (2018). Canada’s Feminist Foreign Policy Promises: An Ambitious Agenda for Gender Equality, Human Rights, Peace and Security. In Norman Hillmer, Pillip Lagassé (Eds.), Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy, Canada Among Nations (pp. 187-205). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73860-4_10
• Wills, E., Swan, E. & Abu-Zahra, N. (2017). Conflits, déplacements migratoires et exil forcé. In Charmain Levy, and Andrea Martinez, by Sonya Malaborza (Eds.), Genre, féminismes et développement: une trilogie en construction (Vol. 1) (pp. 131-150). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9782760328266-010
• Leech, P. & Swan. E. (2018). A ‘Determined Peace-Builder’? Analyzing Canada’s Role in the Israel-Palestine Conflict. In. John Packer (Ed.) Canadian Human Rights Yearbook 2016/2018, (Vol II) (pp. 21-38). Ottawa: Human Rights Research and Education Centre.