Clara Sedzro (she/her)

Areas of Interest

• Social Movements
• Climate Activism
• Gendered protest tactics
• Embodied Knowledges
• Women’s activism: African Studies

Biography

Clara Sedzro is a PhD student at the Women and Gender Studies Institute. She holds a MA in politics from NYU and a BA in Political Science and International Development Studies. Her work centers feminist methodologies and the ways women trigger social and political changes through protesting and organizing.

Her doctoral research delves into West African women’s mobilization and protest strategies in the face of climate change. She investigates how West African women are empowered to collectively mobilize using their knowledges of the compounded vulnerabilities they face to redefine environmental justice issues. She intends to critically examine the tropes of victimhood that surround gendered environmental harm in West Africa and their underlying colonial and patriarchal hegemonies.

Program: PhD 2025

Education

MA, Politics, New York University

BA, Political Science and International Development Studies, McGill University

Dissertation

Supervisor: Marième Lo

Presentations

Nationalism Through a Gendered Lens: Women’s Movements during the Anti-Colonial Struggle in South Africa, 2023 Annual Meeting of the New England Political Science Association, Mystic Connecticut, April 20-22, 2023

Selected Works

Sedzro, Clara (2023) “Nationalism Through a Gendered Lens: Women’s Movements During the Anti-Colonial Struggle,” New England Journal of Political Science: Vol. 14: No. 1, Article 3.

Sedzro, Clara (2021) “Navigating Feminism and Self-Determination: Indigenous Women’s Movements and Indigenous Feminism in Canada and Internationally,” Chrysalis Spring Issue

Honours and Awards