2025 Gender, Peace and Security Student Essay Awards

The first award went to the best policy-focused essay discussing the climate-mobility nexus in the Philippines, the second award went to an essay examining how masculine norms shape peace processes, and the third award went to an essay exploring the layered gender dynamics of agro-pastoral conflict. 

There were multiple submissions on a range of topics and the winners were decided by an award committee who looked at a range of criteria to rate each submission. Overall, three submissions presented were found to be the most compelling and substantive. MAWPS wants to congratulate Cecilia Ignacio, Aaliyah Ibrahim, and Julien Goodman for their outstanding essays! To learn more about our award winners, see their response to questions below about how they became interested in this topic and their hopes for the future.

Cecilia Ignacio

How did I become interested in WPS?

I became interested in Women, Peace, and Security through my own experience and other people’s stories of displacement and resilience. I saw how women often carry the emotional and logistical burden of rebuilding after crises. This awareness deepened as I pursued academic work at the University of Notre Dame and now at Georgetown University. I noticed that while women play critical roles in peacebuilding, their voices are still underrepresented in formal spaces. I am committed to exploring how policy can better reflect the realities women face on the ground.

Why is WPS important to me?
WPS is important to me because women are essential to crisis recovery, conflict prevention, and community rebuilding, yet they are often left out of key decision-making. It is important to highlight both the vulnerabilities women face and the leadership they bring to these processes. I am committed to making sure the voices and priorities of women and girls are heard and taken seriously in shaping peace and security. 

What topics am I most interested in pursuing in the field?
I am most interested in working at the intersection of gender, migration, and climate. I also hope to serve as a connector between data and development to better showcase people’s stories on these issues.

What are my career goals once I’ve completed my studies?
After graduate school, I aim to work at the nexus of policy and research, applying evidence-based insights to explore practical solutions. I hope to collaborate with international organizations or think tanks to advance gender-responsive climate and migration policies, ensuring they are grounded in both rigorous analysis and lived experiences.

Aaliyah Ibrahim

How did I become interested in WPS?

I became interested in the WPS agenda around 2015, during a time of heightened conflict in my hometown of Kaduna, Nigeria, between state actors and the intrastate group known as Boko Haram. The crises of that period greatly influenced my understanding of the importance of including women in discussions about peace and security. Throughout my undergraduate studies, I focused on the human rights aspect of the conflict, the role of female activists in advocating for the return of kidnapped schoolgirls, and the religious factors that contributed to the escalation of the conflict across borders. The WPS framework emerged as a crucial tool for highlighting the gendered dimensions of this conflict.

Why is WPS important to me?

WPS is significant to me because of the outcomes it aims to achieve. In a world where conflict is increasingly diffuse and complex, WPS provides an opportunity to understand that gender remains a crucial dimension in securing peace. It encourages me to consider the composition of decision-making bodies, reflect on the stated goals of all involved parties, and consistently ask, “Where are the women?” If women are present, I can further inquire about their needs and concerns. Therefore, WPS is essential, and even more critical, as our analysis and understanding of modern conflict continues to evolve.

What topics am I most interested in pursuing in the field?

I am particularly interested in the intersection of fragility, resilience, and gender-transformation. Analyzing security through the lens of fragility and resilience is increasingly important not only for identifying where active conflicts might escalate, but for also understanding which environments are prone to conflict and why. It is also an essential frame to consider in how we approach recovery in areas emerging from conflict. By focusing on the role of women in these fragile regions, the WPS agenda can provide an alternative framework for understanding resilience, emphasizing how much the future we seek hinges on the social transformation of women’s roles.

What are my career goals once I’ve completed my studies? 

I am focused on policy and research that elevates narratives of women to show progress in societies. I am seeking gender-transformative outcomes in all areas, specifically working on how market-driven solutions can be deployed in the Humanitarian, Development, and Peace (HDP) nexus.

Julien Goodman

How did I become interested in WPS?

My path to the Women, Peace and Security agenda wasn’t a straight line. I spent ten years in hospitality before moving into graduate school to study conflict resolution and security policy. What struck me, whether in the day-to-day negotiations of hotel work or in the study of fragile peace talks, was how often the softer voices were missing. Collaboration, compromise, and concession rarely made it into the room. Instead, I saw posturing that prized stoicism and dominance, a kind of masculine performance that looked disciplined on the surface but was toxic underneath. It was rewarded even when it came at the expense of long-term stability or real progress. Discovering the WPS framework was like being handed a mirror and a map. It reflected back what I had sensed all along and pointed toward a vision of security built not on bravado, but on balance.

Why is WPS important to me?
I’ve always been a bottom-up thinker. I’m drawn to the psychological effects of agreements and security events. The quiet ways they shape trust, dignity, and the sense of belonging in everyday life. It’s easy for leaders at the top to forget how fragile legitimacy feels on the ground, or how quickly it erodes when people sense they’ve been excluded. That’s why the WPS agenda matters to me: it bridges that distance, insisting that the local perspective isn’t secondary but the foundation of any peace that lasts. Seen this way, security isn’t abstract, it’s lived. It’s not just soldiers and states, it is families, communities, and the people whose futures are shaped by decisions made by unreliable (and often unsympathetic) actors. WPS matters because it pulls those human stories into the center of the conversation. It forces us to ask whose voices are being heard, whose agency is being recognized, and whose experiences are being overlooked. For me, it’s a reminder that peace built without compromise is peace built on sand.

What topics am I most interested in pursuing in the field?
I’m fascinated by the question of legitimacy, who creates it, who challenges it, and how it is performed. My academic interests have also drawn me to the intersection of cognition and conflict, exploring how innate processes like the way we read trust, threat, and cooperation in others, along with predictive coding, and the brain’s hardwired mechanisms for interpreting pattern and uncertainty shape not just what we believe, but why we believe it. This has led me into an under examined space where cognitive science, conflict studies, and international security meet. While there is growing recognition of how narratives and identity shape global behavior, the deeper neural and psychological foundations of political worldviews, and their influence on strategic judgment, ideological rigidity, and collective action, remain largely unexplored. For me, this connects directly to WPS, because gendered assumptions are themselves rooted in these cognitive and cultural frames. They shape who is heard, who is silenced, and who is seen as credible in moments of negotiation and peacebuilding. Understanding those foundations is key to making stable peace & inclusion real, not just rhetorical. That’s the space I want to keep pushing into, because it connects the human mind to the global stage in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

What are my career goals once I’ve completed my studies?

I was never lucky enough to be able to map my life neatly on paper; it has always been lived in seasons rather than straight lines. As a result, I live by a philosophy of thriving where I am planted, trusting that each season offers its own work to be done and its own lessons to be carried forward. For me, the goal is less about chasing a title and more about pursuing questions that matter, how societies hold together, how legitimacy is won or lost. Yet I have always carried a dream that feels almost cinematic: to work alongside a presidential candidate, from the raw urgency of the campaign trail, through the charged anticipation of inauguration, and into the daily gravity of governing. To be there as vision becomes reality, to watch ideas transform into policy, and to help carry the fragile weight of promises into practice, that is a journey I have long wanted to be part of. At the same time, and perhaps more practically, I am not opposed to the long road of a PhD if that proves to be the soil where my curiosity best takes root, just as I am not opposed to jumping right into the arenas of policy or practice, should that position become available. For me, the future is not a destination at all, but a succession of seasons, and I will keep walking through them so long as they bring me closer to the work of peace. 

As a guest blog, the views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of Our Secure Future or any particular organization.