Event Description

The case of Western women joining the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) has garnered considerable media attention, both in the UK and abroad, since the summer of 2014. In the last one and a half years, dozens of British women have left the UK to join ISIS in Syria. Some have travelled with their husbands or families, while others made the journey on their own.

In this event, the first event organised by the newly founded United Nations Association Coventry Branch and attended by about 100 people, Doctoral Research Fellow Jennifer Philippa Eggert shared findings from her research and shed light on the phenomenon of women in ISIS. She addressed issues such as:

– Why do young British women decide to leave their homes and join a terrorist group in a war zone?
– What are their motivations and expectations?
– Once with ISIS, what are their roles within the organisation?
– Why have ISIS decided to encourage women to join them from abroad?
– What can we do to prevent more women joining ISIS?

Speaker Profile

Jennifer Philippa Eggert is a Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. In her research, she focuses on political violence and terrorism, with a particular focus on the role of women during war and violent conflict. She holds degrees from the LSE, Sciences Po and the European University Viadrina and has worked in the fields of intercultural dialogue, community empowerment and the prevention of extremism in a number of countries in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia.

The event was held on Friday 4 March 2016 from 18:00 – 19:00 in Room H0.52, Humanities Building at the University of Warwick, Coventry, and included a discussion in which the audience’s questions guided a dialogue with the speaker.

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Report on Event

Attendance

All 165 seats for this event were distributed free via EventBrite, and there were 280 on the waiting list. About 15 people cancelled their tickets in the 24 hours before the event, and although these were re-assigned to people on the waiting, few took up the offer, perhaps because they had not registered Eventbrite as a contact, so never saw the email. The same thing had happened when we earlier moved the event to a larger room to cope with the volume of people wishing to attend.

As expected, a number of people showed up who did not have tickets, and many who did have tickets did not show up. We asked people without tickets to wait until the starting time had passed, and in the end about 100 people actually attended.

Summary of Event

Jennifer raised a number of key points around the issue of Women in ISIS. This was followed by a question and answer session. We videoed the event and we are now preparing this to add to YouTube.