25.04.2022 Welcome back at the Center for Conflict Studies, Dr. Mariel Reiss!

Starting in April, Dr. Mariel Reiss will continue her research at the Center for Conflict Studies in the research project "Regional Research Center – Transformations of Political Violence". She will mainly work in the work package on the complex relationship between changing patterns of interpretation and justification of political violence; here her research focus will be on LGBTIQ+ persons.

To promote a broad interdisciplinary exchange between scholars, activists, and the public on the rights of LGBTIQ+ persons, a joint event series with the Centre for Gender Studies and Feminist Futures at the Philipps-University Marburg and the Centre for Human Rights and the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS, and Gender at the University of Pretoria, “The Pretoria-Marburg Queer Conversations”, focusing on "Scholarly and Activist Perspectives on LGBTIQ+ Lived Realities in Africa," will take place from April to September 2022.

Reiss holds an M.A. in political science and anthropology from Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. From October 2015 to December 2020, she worked as a research assistant at the Department of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science at Philipps-Universität Marburg, where she received her Ph.D. In December 2020, she joined the Center for Conflict Studies as a postdoctoral fellow. Initially on a bridge position funded by the MArburg Research Academy with funds from the Professorinnenprogramm des Bundes und der Länder. Since July 2021, Dr. Reiss has been leading the project "LGBTIQ+ Rights in Multilevel Governance Systems" which is also based at the Center for Gender Studies and Feminist Futures. The project examines the negotiation of human rights of LGBTIQ+ persons in Botswana and South Africa and at the regional level within the Southern African Development Community. The project is funded by the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts in the research focus "Dimensions of the Category Gender – Women's and Gender Studies in Hesse" and will run until October 2022.

Her publications discuss the establishment processes and the development of regional organizations and the role of state and non-state actors in this context. Her main focus is on African regional organizations, in particular the East African Community, the Southern African Development Community and the African Union. Her new book, "Constructing the East African Community. Diffusion from African and European Regional Organizations" will be published by Routledge in April 2022.