Research Staff

Marianne Tøraasen

Post Doctoral Researcher, Coordinator Rights & Gender

Political scientist studying gender and politics, particularly gender representation in decision-making bodies (the judiciary and the legislature).

Marianne Tøraasen has a PhD in comparative politics and a bachelor's degree in French from the University of Bergen. In her PhD dissertation, Tøraasen studies women's judicial representation in fragile and conflict-affected states through an in-depth case study of the Haitian judiciary. The dissertation focuses particularly on women judges' representative roles, access to and experiences on the bench, and how this is gendered. She spent several months in Haiti interviewing judges and other key informants (women and men) as part of the data collection. Her PhD is part of the CMI/ODI/UoB research project "Women on the Bench: The Role of Women Judges in Fragile States", funded by the Research Council of Norway.

For her master's thesis, Tøraasen conducted field work in Senegal to study the Senegalese gender parity law and its impact on women's symbolic representation in the National Parliament. Tøraasen has also led a study on the Norway-led specialized police team to combat sexual and gender-based violence in Haiti from 2010 to 2019. She has further participated in several evaluations of Norwegian aid. Her academic work has been published in Journal of Modern African Studies and Politics & Gender. She won the LASA Haiti/ Dominican Republic Section Article Prize for her article "Women's Judicial Representation: Unintended Gains of State-building Efforts". Tøraasen is currently coordinating the Rights & Gender research group and the Early Career Network at CMI.

 

 

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