This profile was current as of 2017, when she was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.
Karie Cross Riddle is a Postdoctoral fellow in Peace Studies and Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. She graduated from Notre Dame in August 2017 with fields in political theory and comparative politics. Before pursuing a PhD at Notre Dame, Karie earned a Master of Public Policy in International Development from the University of Maryland.
Karie's interdisciplinary work draws from major literatures in peace studies, political theory, and comparative politics, emphasizing themes of women's agency, the gendered aspects of peace and conflict, the meaning of peace, ethnic identity, and social movements. Her dissertation, "Defining Critical Feminist Justpeace: Women's Peacebuilding Praxis and Feminist Political Thought," explores the fruitful nexus between women's peacebuilding practices in Manipur, India, and liberal and critical feminism. Entering an on-going debate in peace studies about "the liberal peace"-- top-down, UN-led initiatives that focus on ceasefires, elections, and market liberalization-- Karie offers the ethnography- and feminist theory-informed concept of critical feminist justpeace as a promising alternative. Taking women's peacebuilding experiences and the insights of liberal and critical feminism together, we see that disruptive power hierarchies, even within movements for peace, tend to harm opportunities for constructive social change. The feminist tool of political intersectionality is particularly helpful for seeing and mitigating such hierarchies and producing a more lasting, gender-just peace.