Episode 39: The Role of Gender in Conflict

What role does gender play in conflict? In this episode of the Precision-Guided Podcast, University of Georgia alumni Stephanie Cannon and Kara Joyce interview Dr. Maryann Gallagher, a senior lecturer at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs and the director of the Security Leadership Program in the Center for International Trade and Security, to discover the ways gender impacts multiple levels of conflict and how these impacts play into gender justice.

About the Guest

Maryann E. Gallagher is the Director of the Richard B. Russell Security Leadership Program (SLP) at the University of Georgia’s Benson-Bertsch Center for International Trade and Security and senior lecturer in the Department of International Affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). She is also an affiliate faculty member of UGA’s Institute for Women’s Studies.

Dr. Gallagher’s research interests include American foreign policy, gender in international relations, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. She teaches upper-level courses on American Foreign Policy, Decision Making in International Relations, Women & World Politics, and War & Gender. In addition, she teaches the first-semester practicum course and supervises the research semester for students in the SLP. Her research has been published in academic journals including Foreign Policy Analysis, Political Science Quarterly, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics.

Dr. Gallagher’s dedication to students and commitment to teaching has been recognized across UGA’s campus. In 2025, she was awarded the University of Georgia Award for Excellence in Teaching. In previous years she received SPIA’s Excellence in Teaching Award (for non-tenure track faculty), UGA’s Morehead Honors College’s J. Hatten Howard III Honors Teaching Award, which recognizes faculty who exhibit special promise in teaching Honors courses early in their careers, and the Department of International Affairs Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2022 she participated in UGA’s Center for Teaching and Learning’s Active Learning Summer Institute and was a member of the 2021-2022 Writing Fellows cohort. She has served on the selection committee of UGA’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Office of the Vice President for Instruction’s Active Learning Advisory Committee, and the Department of International Affairs’ Curriculum Committee. Finally, Dr. Gallagher is the faculty organizer of SPIA’s annual Undergraduate Research Colloquium. This all-day event brings together members of the SPIA community to celebrate the research experiences of SPIA’s outstanding undergraduate students and the faculty who facilitate their work.

Dr. Gallagher received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Emory University and her B.A. from Drew University. Prior to joining the faculty at UGA in 2014, she was an assistant professor at DePauw University.

Views expressed are personal and do not represent the views of GSSR or any other entity.