Workshop considers next steps for Feminist Foreign Policy
On 3 September 2026, with support from the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies, Newnham College hosted the “What’s Next for Feminist Foreign Policy?” academic workshop, organised by Chloe Sanyu (Department of Geography) and Leah M. Schmidt (Centre for Gender Studies, Department of Politics and International Studies).
The one-day workshop welcomed 22 participants from the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, Serbia, Germany, Canada, the U.S., Mexico, and the Czech Republic, participating both in-person and online. The conversation was energising and covered a range of disciplinary perspectives.
Organised under three panels focused on the past, present and future of Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP), researchers submitted a current piece of writing for consideration, and explored a range of topics, including:
- The value of FFP institutionalisation versus transformation, including questions about who defines gender equality, whose knowledge counts, and how success should be evaluated when feminist ideas enter foreign policy machinery.
- Rollback, resilience, and the politics of the “feminist” label, including why FFP has been abandoned or weakened in several Global North countries amid electoral change, anti-gender backlash, militarisation, and geopolitical crisis; and why FFP retains resilience in the Global South.
- Rethinking the “state” as the central locus of FFP, including how civil society, movements, bureaucrats, communities, and transnational actors should be included within the FFP ecosystem.
- What a genuinely transformative FFP should encompass, including pushing beyond conventional FFP portfolios toward coloniality, development and ODA, militarism, climate and ecological justice, trade, migration, care, and the crisis of the liberal international order.
Between the morning and afternoon panels, participants heard a talk from Dr Gloria Novovic, Lecturer in Public Policy at King’s College London, who presented remarks on “Revisiting Feminist Foreign Policy amidst Rising Planetary Threats”:
- Dr. Novovic challenged participants to ask which pieces of the FFP project are worth preserving, particularly where its institutional forms have accommodated militarism, colonialism, inequality, and the defence of a liberal international order that often privileges stability over justice.
- She argued that the current backlash should be treated as an opportunity to clarify what feminist policy practitioners are actually fighting for, including when engagement with the state becomes counterproductive and whether a more transformative, anticolonial, ecological, and transnational feminist politics is needed.
The workshop enabled generosity in mentorship and feedback towards developing ideas and reflections posited by participants across a range of thematic areas within FFP.
The organisers are grateful to all the participants for their enthusiastic participation and look forward to continuing the conversation on “What’s Next for FFP?”.
Photo credit: Sarah Moritz, University of Manchester.