Dr Columba Achilleos-Sarll

• PhD Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick
• MPhil International Relations, University of Oxford
• PGCHE Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education

Columba Achilleos-Sarll joined POLSIS in September 2021 after completing her PhD at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. Before joining Birmingham, Columba was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, an affiliated research fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP), and a visiting researcher at the Centre for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University.

Columba’s primary research examines the United Nation’s Security Council’s ‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) agenda. A strand of this research explores the UK’s implementation and institutionalisation of the agenda, focussing in particular on networked and transnational civil society. She is in the process of writing up this project for publication as a manuscript, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. Beyond the WPS agenda, Columba’s research extends to feminist foreign policy, visual global politics, and civil society, and is currently co-editing an anthology on feminist foreign policies. Her work has been published in several peer review journals and in addition has written book chapters, blogs, and opinion pieces. 

Columba's research has been nominated, shortlisted, or the recipient of several research prizes by multiple professional associations including: the 2019 ISA Global Development Studies Edward Said Award (recipient); the 2017 Feminist Studies Association Prize (shortlisted); the 2021 International Affairs Early Career Prize (shortlisted); and the Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize (nominated). In addition, in 2019, she received a Departmental Commendation for Outstanding Contribution to the PAIS Department’s Teaching at the University of Warwick and was also nominated for a Warwick Award for Postgraduates who Teach.

• Global History (UG)
• Gender, Peace and Insecurity (PGT)

Dr Achilleos-Sarll is interested in supervising PhD students in the following areas: feminist and post/decolonial approaches to international relations; the Women, Peace and Security agenda; civil society and advocacy; visual global politics; feminist foreign policy.

Current Students

(Co-supervising with Dr Danielle Beswick) Scarlet Elliott-Vass, ESRC Studentship: ‘Sub State Translations: Exploring the Localisation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Uganda’.

(Co-supervising with Katherine E. Brown & Sameera Khalfey) Kirby Ferran: 'Evaluating the Gendered Biases of UK Counter Terrorism Architecture: Responding to Women’s Radicalisation'

Research Interests

Dr Achilleos-Sarll’s research focuses on several areas:

• The Women, Peace and Security Agenda
• Civil society and advocacy
• Visual global politics
• Feminist Foreign Policy

Memberships: International Studies Association (ISA); British International Studies Association (BISA)

Columba co-convenes with Dr Emma A. Foster the Gender and Feminist Theory research group, a vibrant research group hosted in POLSIS which brings together academics and students across the institution interested in gender and feminist theory.