Belén González presents her paper on the strategic politics of hunger strikes. This event is part of the International Security Research Colloquium hosted by the Centre for International Security.
Hunger strikes are a frequent form of political protest. From Mahatma Gandhi during India's campaign for independence to Alexei Navalny's political imprisonment in Putin's Russia, hunger strikes have played an important role in confronting the state throughout history. However, we know only little about the political logic that drives the decision of activists to refuse ingestion. Why and which dissident groups engage in this form of tactic? Is it effective in mobilizing support or obtaining political concessions? In this paper, Belén González, assistant professor of sustainable governance at Leuphana University and a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, presents her ongoing data collection effort, aimed at understanding the determinants, mechanisms, and consequences of hunger strikes as a contentious tactic.
Speaker
Belén González
Belén González is an assistant professor of sustainable governance at Leuphana University and a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. She received her Ph.D. in 2015 from the University of Essex and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Mannheim. Her work lies at the intersection of comparative and international politics, focusing on how the composition and behaviour of state, non-state, and informal actors influence and shape political conflict. Originally from Argentina, she has done fieldwork in Latin America and Southern Asia and has a methodological focus on comparative methods. Her work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Peace Research, and Journal of Conflict Resolution, among others.
