Expert Seminar: Reframing the History of International Organizations through Gender and Religion
MONDAY 9TH AND TUESDAY 10TH OF MARCH 2026
This expert seminar will convene scholars of religion, historians from diverse fields, sociologists, and international relations specialists to critically reassess the historical role of women, religion, and secular ideas in shaping international relations. The discussion will trace a historical arc beginning with the founding of the League of Nations and extending through the transformative decades of the Cold War and the era of Decolonisation (1919–1989).
Moving beyond binary frameworks, the seminar will illuminate the complex and often paradoxical entanglements that have defined women’s presence in international organisations. It will examine how religious and secular worldviews intersected in shaping institutional, development, ethical, and gender agendas, and how these interactions unfolded across North–South, East–West, and South–South relations. We will aim to understand these encounters as dynamic networks of circulation and mutual influence (notably in practice), rather than merely as static ideological divides.
Key themes include:
- Gender dynamics: who speaks and acts in the name of an ideology or religion, and how gendered moral and ethical orders are promoted, contested, or reshaped at the international level.
- The historical role of women in international organisations, including Faith-Based Organisations and NGOs, during European reconstruction after World Wars I and II, the Cold War, and Decolonisation.
- How secular expertise and religious authority were sometimes constructed and practiced from below.
- The making and transformation of formal and informal networks across spiritual, ideological, and geographical boundaries.
- Contributions of non-state, non-elite, and gender/ethnic minorities in international spaces.
- Reconceptualisations of agency, expertise, and governability, as well as women’s intellectual and conceptual contributions to international relations, development, and theology.
The seminar will thus provide fresh insights into the historical roots of global governance, development, and gendered diplomacy, while fostering dialogue across disciplines and offering critical perspectives on the role of religion and secular ideas in the international sphere.
The programme will feature a visit to KADOC (Documentation and Research Centre on Religion, Culture and Society), together with a guided tour of the TheoFem exhibition “From the kitchen to the world: Women in international Catholic organisations”, curated by Dr. Natalia Núñez Bargueño (KU Leuven) and inaugurated on 8 March, International Women’s Day. The exhibition wishes to also mark Women’s History Month.
Organisers:
Natalia Núñez Bargueño
Dries Bosschaert
Patrick Pasture
Contact: natalia.nunezbargueno@kuleuven.be
For more information and registration:
The organisers would like to thank the Shout it out! initiative for the financial support received for the organisation of the seminar.
