
Postdoctoral Fellow, August 2020 - May 2021
My research interests lie primarily within critical and feminist security studies, gender, armed conflict, and gender-based violence, particularly sexual violence against men. I completed my ESRC-funded PhD in February 2020 at the University of Edinburgh. It explored how sexual violence against men in armed conflict is discursively represented through the practices of international criminal law and international non-governmental human rights organisations, and considered the consequences of these representations for conceptual and policy approaches to sexual violence and gender more broadly.
Project Title: Men, Gender, and (In)Visibility: Representations of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence against Men in International Law and the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative
During my Postdoctoral Fellowship at IASH, I will be undertaking two concurrent projects. The first project will be an analysis of how the UK Government’s flagship Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) has so far approached sexual violence against men in armed conflict. In particular, it will explore what discourses of sexual violence and gender are (re)produced by written and audio-visual materials produced by the PSVI, consider what spaces there are for male survivors of sexual violence within these discourses, and discuss the possibilities for addressing and responding to sexual violence against both women and men in an effective and nuanced manner. The second project will expand upon the research conducted during the course of my doctoral studies. Specifically, it will incorporate an analysis of appeals judgements from key international criminal tribunals into the existing framework of the research conducted during my PhD, in preparation for the development and submission of a book proposal on the basis of my thesis.
Recent Publications:
Charman, Thomas. (Forthcoming, 2020) “A Story that Can(not) be Told: Sexual Violence against Men in ICTR and ICTY Jurisprudence.” In International Law’s Selected Stories, edited by Renske Vos and Sofia Stolk. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Charman, Thomas. (2018) "Sexual Violence or Torture?: The Framing of Sexual Violence against Men in Armed Conflict in Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Reports." In Sexual Violence against Men in Global Politics, edited by Marysia Zalewski, Paula Drumond, Elisabeth Prügl and Maria Stern, p.198-210. Abingdon: Routledge.