In this talk, Dr Jenny Hedström explores the Kachin revolution in Myanmar from the perspective of female soldiers, female activists, and women displaced by the violence in northern Myanmar.
Hedström argues that the household is an inherently gendered, militarized, and political space that impacts, and is in turn impacted by, the external conflict with which it coexists. In this context, women's everyday labour—the gendered work of childcare, farming, fighting, and forging connections both across households and between the household and the army and the nation—is key to revolutionary survival.
Hedström calls this labour militarized social reproduction, and in her new book Reproducing Revolution she demonstrates that such labour is critical to the military effort, and that warfare itself is shaped through everyday domestic action.
Copies of Jenny Hedström’s new book, Reproducing Revolution: Women's Labor and the War in Kachinland (2025, Cornell University Press) will be on sale at the event. Read about the book.
SPEAKER
Jenny Hedström is an Associate Professor in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University. Her research concerns the relationship between households, gender, and warfare; gender, transitions, and peacebuilding; women’s activism and resistance; and ethics and methods when researching war, with a focus on civil wars in Myanmar.
Her staff page is at: https://www.fhs.se/sc/profile-page.html?identity=400.554900c317651ceabe713fa7
PRACTICAL
In-person event, in room A2.6 in Ellen Wilkinson Building, University of Manchester
Discussant - Dr Patrick Meehan, Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, HCRI
Open to all. Registration at: https://reproducing-revolution.eventbrite.co.uk
For any accessibility-related questions, please contact hcri@manchester.ac.uk
