Kelly Atkinson, Ph.D.

kelly.atkinson@afacademy.af.edu


Assistant Professor

U.S. Air Force Academy

Year of PhD: 2017

Country: United States (Colorado)

About Me:

Kelly Atkinson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the US Air Force Academy, a major in the US Air Force, and a career intelligence officer. She is a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member and a Women in International Security 2021 Gender, Peace & Security Next Generation Symposium Participant. Kelly is an alumna of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force Strategic PhD program and holds a PhD in Political Science and Women's Studies from the Ohio State University. Her doctoral research explored the effect of gender-based development policies on child recruitment into conflict, supported by archival research and interviews at the United Nations Headquarters in New York and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. Kelly has published multiple peer-reviewed journal articles on the role of refugee women in peacebuilding efforts within conflict dynamics. At the Air Force Academy Kelly conducts research and teaches courses at the intersection of diversity and security.

Research Interests

Development

Conflict Processes & War

Gender and Politics

Middle East & North African Politics

Peacekeeping

NGOs

United Nations

UNHCR

Gender And Military

Publications:

Journal Articles:

(2021) Warrior Braids and the Air Force Women’s Initiative Team – The Invisible Labor behind Diversity, Inclusion, and Institutional Change, Wild Blue Yonder

Cast your gaze across the faces of US Air Force servicewomen in the days after 10 February 2021, and you cannot help but notice the joyous reaction to the service’s recent change in its hair standards for women. Ponytails are swinging free, braids are cascading down backs, and servicewomen are excelling in their military duties with a new edge of confidence. Amid all the fanfare and media blitz for this long-awaited and much-anticipated change in hair standards, it is easy to focus solely on the results and fail to examine the years of painstaking, process-oriented work that generated this change. Therein lies the problem: ignoring the work that supports diversity and inclusion efforts within bureaucratic institutions renders that work invisible. This process-oriented labor is far from glamorous and becomes ripe for co-optation by those who fail to recognize the effort, advocacy, and alliance-building necessary to enact institutional change from within. If individuals, groups, and populations can see and understand the processes that lead to successful transformation within existing institutions, they can employ and reinforce those mechanisms to promote continued advancements of diversity and inclusion in those institutions. Just as you can’t be what you can’t see, changing an institution from within becomes easier and more effective when you have a plan to follow.

(2019) Refugees and Recruitment: Understanding Violations Against Children in Armed Conflict With Novel Data, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development

What makes child recruitment into armed conflict more likely? Violations against children in armed conflict pose a significant challenge to conflict resolution, long-term peacebuilding efforts, and international stability, yet little data are available on a global scale to understand the scope and causes of child recruitment into conflict. This article makes two contributions towards closing this analytical gap. First, utilising annual reports of the United Nations Secretary-General on children and armed conflict, this article codes child recruitment and other grave violations against children for 28 countries from 2006 to 2015 producing a new data set. Second, using this data set, this article examines the broad role of displacement in shaping child recruitment into armed conflict. Ultimately, this article finds that displacement within a country is positively and statistically significantly correlated with violations against children in armed conflict to include child recruitment and introduces policy recommendations for engaging this finding.

(2018) Policy and Possibilities of Humanitarian Development: Displaced Women and Peace-building Features of the UNHCR, Refugee Survey Quarterly

Displaced environments are sites of global humanitarian development initiatives that often address how to disrupt cycles of conflict. What ongoing policy initiatives within displaced settings offer opportunities to bolster these humanitarian development initiatives to mitigate conflict dynamics and their impact on displaced populations? This article addresses this question by exploring the role of displaced women in peace-building processes. The focus on women and peace-building has expanded in the 20 years since the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, yet the emphasis on displaced women as critical participants in peace-building efforts remains nascent in humanitarian development policy. This proves especially true within the policies of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Using archival research and interviews with elite professionals, this article evaluates the UNHCR institutional capabilities, limitations, and historic trajectory of its gender policy in order to reveal possibilities for peace-building displaced women within current development policy. Recognising and enabling the peace-building agency of empowered women will posture the UNHCR to implement effective humanitarian development policies to address contemporary global displacement crises, thus strengthening the ongoing United Nations Women, Peace and Security agenda while simultaneously harnessing the peace-building potential of displaced women.

Other:

(2021) Air Force hair standards and the invisible labor changing institutions, Air Force Times

Air Force Times Commentary