How it started

"With my thesis I focussed on the gendered construct around women terrorists in ISIS and how this influences both the legal domain and counter-terrorism studies. I demonstrated this construct through focussing on a recent, legal Dutch case-study of Shurki and Maher, in which Maher was given a four-year prison sentence while Shukri was exonerated. In order to see why, I did a doctrinal analysis and a discourse analysis. Through the combination of the best supervisors in both the doctrinal analysis, Marta Bo and the discourse analysis, Lucy Hall, I showed that Dutch laws do not catch up to either the realities of gender or combat and that counter-terrorism policies are therefore failing to cope with the threat women terrorists pose to the Netherlands, especially with the amount of foreign fighters returning."

What happened next

"After I completed my thesis, Lucy told me about the International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP) and that I should apply to present my thesis at this conference in San Francisco. We both thought that the chances of me getting in would be slim, but since I wanted to see if I could get it published in this journal, it would be good to get used to how publishing and presenting articles work. So I applied in May and to my (very happy) surprise I got the chance to present this work in San Francisco in April. It was a great experience and I am handing my article in for publication in June. Furthermore I also made a lot of contacts in the feminist security field, in which potential PhD’s were discussed, so I am really interested to seeing where this goes. I have to say that I owe both the thesis as well as the conference to my supervisor, Lucy, who inspired me enormously and pushed me to be as ambitious as possible."

My advice to you

"So for those of you doing the thesis right now, enjoy the process, because my academic career kind of kick-started with my thesis!"