Anne Menzel
Biographic Data
| ID | 5423701 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anne Menzel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anne |
| FAMILY NAME | Menzel |
| SIGNATURE | MENZEL A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Freie Universität Berlin |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5466-7404 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Global Hierarchies and Unequal Pressures in the Report-Making of Truth Commissions
In this analytical essay, we situate truth commissions as relevant sites for International Relations (IR) research, in particular on professional communities and knowledge hierarchies. With an empirical focus on report-making, we argue that there is a need to rethink and revise established professional community concepts. While these concepts stress professional communities’ detachment from mundane pressures, we suggest a “pressure lens” to bette…
Responding to Sexual Violence
This article introduces an analytical framework for studying and interpreting the sometimes surprisingly different ‘shapes’ (key topics and approaches) of donor-funded responses to sexual violence in and after armed conflict. Our framework highlights processes of politicization, depoliticization, and technicalization and their influence on interventions. Drawing on available studies, published documents, and our own field research in the Democrat…
Making sense of girls empowerment in Sierra Leone
This Testify article features a conversation about the emancipatory potentials and pitfalls of girls empowerment as practiced, experienced, and judged by Sierra Leonean activists. We – two scholars and four activists – discussed views on and experiences of girls empowerment approaches that have been interpreted in critical scholarly literature as a form of neoliberal responsibilization. Also within this critical literature, there is often the not…
Delivering output and struggling for change
The professionalization of transitional justice (TJ) has received extensive academic attention in TJ and related international relations and peacebuilding scholarship. This article adds an element that has received hardly any attention: namely the presence of activism even among professional and usually donor-funded TJ work. I argue that noticing activism in professional contexts requires attention to the ‘everyday’, meaning to life in between, a…
The pressures of getting it right
∞ This article contributes to scholarship on power, agency and ownership in professional transitional justice. It explores and details the relationship between ‘professional’ agency arising from recognized expertise and ‘unprofessional’ voices relaying lived experiences, concerns and needs. I approach this relationship via a microperspective on the work of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2002-2004), specifically its work on …
Without Education You Can Never Become President’
This article analyses the emergence of ‘teenage pregnancy’ as a new policy focus in post-Ebola Sierra Leone and explores how Sierra Leoneans interpret the problem of ‘teenage pregnancy’. I argue that the new policy focus is not indicative of changing or new problems. Rather, ‘teenage pregnancy’ has created opportunities for donors and the Government of Sierra Leone to continue cooperation in gender politics. At the same time, Sierra Leoneans are …
The perils of recognising local agency
Betterment Versus Complicity
Patron–client logics have long provided a crucial lens for the analysis and interpretation of sociopolitical imagination and agency in the Upper Guinea Coast and even in Sub-Sahara Africa in general. However, this lens also comes with limitations: as long as one expects patron–client relations, there is a good chance that one will (only) find relations that fit the patron–client picture. Menzel’s chapter explores a different perspective. Based on…
Politikberatung in Deutschland
The perils of recognising local agency
The pressures of getting it right
∞ This article contributes to scholarship on power, agency and ownership in professional transitional justice. It explores and details the relationship between ‘professional’ agency arising from recognized expertise and ‘unprofessional’ voices relaying lived experiences, concerns and needs. I approach this relationship via a microperspective on the work of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2002-2004), specifically its work on …
Delivering output and struggling for change
The professionalization of transitional justice (TJ) has received extensive academic attention in TJ and related international relations and peacebuilding scholarship. This article adds an element that has received hardly any attention: namely the presence of activism even among professional and usually donor-funded TJ work. I argue that noticing activism in professional contexts requires attention to the ‘everyday’, meaning to life in between, a…
Without Education You Can Never Become President’
This article analyses the emergence of ‘teenage pregnancy’ as a new policy focus in post-Ebola Sierra Leone and explores how Sierra Leoneans interpret the problem of ‘teenage pregnancy’. I argue that the new policy focus is not indicative of changing or new problems. Rather, ‘teenage pregnancy’ has created opportunities for donors and the Government of Sierra Leone to continue cooperation in gender politics. At the same time, Sierra Leoneans are …
Politikberatung in Deutschland
Betterment Versus Complicity
Patron–client logics have long provided a crucial lens for the analysis and interpretation of sociopolitical imagination and agency in the Upper Guinea Coast and even in Sub-Sahara Africa in general. However, this lens also comes with limitations: as long as one expects patron–client relations, there is a good chance that one will (only) find relations that fit the patron–client picture. Menzel’s chapter explores a different perspective. Based on…
The perils of recognising local agency
Without Education You Can Never Become President’
This article analyses the emergence of ‘teenage pregnancy’ as a new policy focus in post-Ebola Sierra Leone and explores how Sierra Leoneans interpret the problem of ‘teenage pregnancy’. I argue that the new policy focus is not indicative of changing or new problems. Rather, ‘teenage pregnancy’ has created opportunities for donors and the Government of Sierra Leone to continue cooperation in gender politics. At the same time, Sierra Leoneans are …
The pressures of getting it right
∞ This article contributes to scholarship on power, agency and ownership in professional transitional justice. It explores and details the relationship between ‘professional’ agency arising from recognized expertise and ‘unprofessional’ voices relaying lived experiences, concerns and needs. I approach this relationship via a microperspective on the work of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2002-2004), specifically its work on …
Making sense of girls empowerment in Sierra Leone
This Testify article features a conversation about the emancipatory potentials and pitfalls of girls empowerment as practiced, experienced, and judged by Sierra Leonean activists. We – two scholars and four activists – discussed views on and experiences of girls empowerment approaches that have been interpreted in critical scholarly literature as a form of neoliberal responsibilization. Also within this critical literature, there is often the not…
Delivering output and struggling for change
The professionalization of transitional justice (TJ) has received extensive academic attention in TJ and related international relations and peacebuilding scholarship. This article adds an element that has received hardly any attention: namely the presence of activism even among professional and usually donor-funded TJ work. I argue that noticing activism in professional contexts requires attention to the ‘everyday’, meaning to life in between, a…
Responding to Sexual Violence
This article introduces an analytical framework for studying and interpreting the sometimes surprisingly different ‘shapes’ (key topics and approaches) of donor-funded responses to sexual violence in and after armed conflict. Our framework highlights processes of politicization, depoliticization, and technicalization and their influence on interventions. Drawing on available studies, published documents, and our own field research in the Democrat…
Global Hierarchies and Unequal Pressures in the Report-Making of Truth Commissions
In this analytical essay, we situate truth commissions as relevant sites for International Relations (IR) research, in particular on professional communities and knowledge hierarchies. With an empirical focus on report-making, we argue that there is a need to rethink and revise established professional community concepts. While these concepts stress professional communities’ detachment from mundane pressures, we suggest a “pressure lens” to bette…
Political science (8 works) · Sierra leone (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Gender, Security, and Conflict (5 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (4 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (4 works) · Social science (4 works) · Socioeconomics (4 works)