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Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative

IGLI encourages engagement between researchers and activists on how to most effectively wage and support movements for social change.

Our Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative (IGLI) initiates research, education and programming aimed at elevating and amplifying the work that women-identified and gender non-conforming activists are doing at the grassroots to promote peace, justice and human rights around the world. IGLI embraces a commitment to nonviolence and feminist principles of leadership. This initiative is Directed by Professor Marie Berry.

Learn more about IGLI and access participant resources here.

Our Three Core Components

Research

How do post-war empowerment interventions impact women's lives? The Women's Rights After War (WRAW) project asks which women benefit from new opportunities, suggesting that the implementation of gender egalitarian laws and policies often maps onto existing socio-political cleavages.

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Programming

The IGLI speaker series brings speakers and practitioners-in-residence to the University of Denver as part of an effort to convene conversations that catalyze inclusive leadership related to global peace and security. These guests conduct innovative programming that actively includes members of the broader community in Denver and beyond.

IGLI Summer Institute

The Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative's annual Summer Institute brings women-identified activists working on the frontlines to promote peace, justice and human rights around the world to Colorado to receive advanced training in waging successful nonviolent movements for social change. The Institute is designed to strengthen their role as leaders in movements by offering women activists evidence-based training, networking opportunities and a space to exchange stories about their particular struggles and successes.

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Check out our 2023-2024 IGLI Annual Report!

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Feminist Peace Summit - May 1-3, 2024

Thank you to all who made this incredible event happen!

A coalition of feminist and demilitarization scholars, activists, and movement leaders organized a Feminist Peace Summit here at Korbel from May 1-3, 2024. The Summit was open to all who wanted to join a creative, participatory 2.5-day effort to transform U.S. foreign policies away from war and militarism by advancing feminist and internationalist values.

The Summit brought together activists, academics, policymakers, philanthropists, and other key allies for several days of plenaries, breakout workshops, training sessions, and art-based political education. We were privileged to welcome leading scholars and activists such as Margo Okazawa-Rey, Cynthia Enloe, Toni Haastrup, Sara Haghdoosti, Linda Burnham, Kavita Ramdas, Diana Lopez, Janene Yazzie, Lara Kiswani, Nana Gyamfi, and more as some of our plenary speakers.

We convened this Summit in the face of intensifying militarization and climate devastation at home and abroad, and believe it is ever more urgent to gather our social movements to call for genuine human security grounded in peace, justice, and ecological sustainability.
Visit our FPS website for more info about the Summit's speakers, breakout sessions, and takeaways here!

Related Faculty

Chen Reis

Clinical Associate Professor
Degree Director, International Human Rights
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Hilary A. Matfess

Assistant Professor
Degree Director, International Security
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Marie E. Berry

Associate Professor
Director, Sié Center
Director, Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative
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Learn About Dr. Marie Berry's Award-Winning Work

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Faculty & Staff

Art and Resistance: The Story of a Citizens' Uprising in Cuba
Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative Bridges Gap Between Art and Academics

On January 12, 2023 Dr. Choman Hardi joined the Sié Center in a discussion on feminist activism in Iraq. In the event titled ‘Women’s Resistance: On the Page and on the Ground’, she discussed what it meant to be Kurdish and feminist in her home country and her transformation into an activist. In 2015, Hardi founded the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani’s (AUIS) Center for Gender and Development Studies, and in 2017, she established Iraq’s first interdisciplinary gender studies minor. Her research includes a range of topics from poetry and feminist literature to masculinity and women’s activism, to gender and genocide. It was that night, in a room full of people from the US and around the world, that Hardi read the words of her poems, talked about living the life of an activist, academic, and poet, and brought, for those who haven’t been to Iraq, her world into the intimate setting of Maglione Hall.

Faculty & Staff

2020-2021 Practitioner-in-Residence: Togolese Activist Farida Nabourema Brings Her Work to Korbel Class

Farida Nabourema grew up in Togo watching her father model activism and the importance of political participation. By the time she was 13, she was already involved in that same work, and by 20 she had co-founded a movement known as Faure Must Go.
The movement’s goal was — and remains — to remove Togolese dictator Faure Gnassingbé from power and steer the country toward democracy by mobilizing its people. Because of this work and ongoing human rights abuses in Togo, she has faced threats and even had to flee the country.

Faculty & Staff

'Oprah of Syria' Brings Fresh Perspectives to DU

Honey Al Sayed, a Syrian media personality, spent fall quarter 2019 teaching Media and the Arts for Peace. Honey is an award-winning independent media expert and entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and the United States.
In Syria, Honey Al Sayed's work earned her comparisons to Oprah. For years, her daily three-hour live radio show, “Good Morning, Syria,” reached millions with a refreshing lineup of uplifting storytelling and discussions about taboo topics ranging from sexual education to corruption. Al Sayed has spent years rebuilding her career in the U.S. and leaping through hoop after hoop in the immigration process.

Practitioners-in-Residence

The Sié Center and IGLI's Practitioner-in-Residence program brings prominent practitioners to DU to share their practical insights and expertise with students and faculty. Learn more about the Sié Center's Practitioners-in-Residence and Visiting Scholars here. 

Spring 2023: Cuban art historian, human rights activist, and democracy advocate Carolina Barrero gave guest lectures, met with faculty and students, participated in community events, and gave a public talk on the theme, "Art and Resistance: The Story of a Citizens’ Uprising in Cuba." 

Winter 2023: Kurdish-Iraqi poet and scholar Choman Hardi gave guest lectures, met with faculty and students, and gave a public talk on the theme, "Women’s Resistance: On the Page and on the Ground." 

Spring 2022: Togolese activist Farida Nabourema returned to the Korbel School to teach her popular class on "Resisting Authoritarianism in the Digital Age." 

Fall 2021: Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan researcher and writer, taught a class on “African Women and the Revolution” and gave a talk on “Digital Rights for the People: Freedom, Justice and Inclusion in the Digital Age.”

Spring 2021: Togolese activist Farida Nabourema joined the Korbel School as an adjunct faculty member after her participation in the 2019 Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative (IGLI) Summer Institute. She taught a course on "Resisting Authoritarianism in the Digital Age." Farida also participating in the public event, "Forging Feminist Futures," which featured IGLI alumni Karen Isaacs (Israel) and Yanith Verónica Cristancho Segura (Colombia). 

Fall 2019: Award-winning independent media expert and entrepreneur Honey Al Sayed taught a course on "Media and the Arts for Peace" and gave a talk on social movements held at the RedLine Contemporary Art Center in Denver's RiNo art district.

War, Women and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina

Rwanda and Bosnia both experienced mass violence in the early 1990s. Less than ten years later, Rwandans surprisingly elected the world's highest level of women to parliament. In Bosnia, women launched thousands of community organizations that became spaces for informal political participation. The political mobilization of women in both countries complicates the popular image of women as merely the victims and spoils of war. Through a close examination of these cases, Marie E. Berry unpacks the puzzling relationship between war and women's political mobilization.

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Past Events

Self-Defense, De-Escalation and Healing Space: A Workshop with IGLI Alumna Rana Abdelhamid
November 9, 2018

The Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative (IGLI) at the Sié Center was pleased to invite the DU Community to join IGLI alumna Rana Abdelhamid for a dynamic self-defense, de-escalation and healing space workshop. Rana is the founder of MALIKAH, a global collective of women committed to building security and power for ourselves and our communities. Over the past eight years, MALIKAH has conducted healing spaces and trained over 3,000 women in self-defense, economic empowerment and organizing. MALIKAH believes that it is our human right to exist in the world free from all forms of violence, and provides women and non-binary individuals with skills to de-escalate violent situations.

Book Talk: War, Women and Power with Marie Berry

April 10, 2018

This talk and panel convened experts in the field of gender, peace and security to discuss the themes in Marie Berry's book — War, Women and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This panel featured Yolande Bouka, Erica Chenoweth, Milli Lake and Zoe Marks, with an introduction by Josef Korbel School Acting Dean, Pardis Mahdavi.

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