Heart, Head and Hands: Inter-Cultural, Experiential and Applied Gender Learning in a Peace Studies Department

Abstract

“Gender Day” is an obligatory annual learning event for all first-year undergraduate and Masters students in the Department of Peace Studies (University of Bradford, England), designed as a foundational experience for a multicultural student body to develop gender analytical skills. The curriculum uses three carefully sequenced elements. The first session, based on peer-facilitated small-group discussion of participants’ lived knowledge of gender norms, engages the “heart” - emotion and personal experience. The second, a lecture on academic concepts around sex, gender and sexuality and their inter-relationship, engages the “head”. The third, a workshop demonstrating the practical techniques of applying gender analysis to a policy or intellectual problem in politics, international relations, and peace/conflict studies, engages their “hands”. This article analyzes why and how Gender Day was devised and argues that its positive gender-mainstreaming impact on students and the Department results from the pedagogical philosophy underpinning its three, integrated elements and the opportunity offered by a heterogeneous student cohort