Diana Højlund Madsen

Senior Researcher

You can reach our researchers at nai@nai.uu.se

ORCID: 0000-0001-6376-5498 External link, opens in new window.

Linkedin External link, opens in new window.

Diana Højlund Madsen is a gender specialist with expertise on transformative approaches towards gendered political empowerment and peace and security. Her expertise also includes mainstreaming processes, gender and institutional development and women’s organisations and mobilization strategies.

Research centers around the dynamics of gender, power and change related to other intersectional categories like age, class, ethnicity, race and sexuality and the strategies deployed to achieve gender justice from different positions.
Recently published book: ‘Gendered Institutions and Women’s Political Representation in Africa’.
Research fellow of the University of the Free State in South Africa.
Running the project ‘Making Politics Safer – Gendered Violence and Electoral Temporalities’

Diana Højlund Madsen holds a Ph.D. on gender mainstreaming in Africa with a focus on actors such as the national gender machinery, the women’s movement and a donor. She is inspired by theories on feminist institutionalism, intersectionality, norm translation and postcolonial feminism.

The focus for Diana Højlund Madsen's work has been on gender and conflict in Rwanda, especially the translation of UN Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security into practice at the level of UN, state, national and local women’s organisations. Furthermore, she has carried out a project on women’s political representation at the level of Parliament in Ghana.

Assistant Professor at the Gender Research Centre at Aalborg University, Denmark 2016
Ph.D. from the Centre for Gender, Power and Diversity at Roskilde University, Denmark 2010
Master’s degree on international development studies and public administration at Roskilde University 1999