TEHRAN – Norwegian gender studies scholar Inger Skjelsbæk’s 2011 book “The Political Psychology of War Rape: Studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina” has been published in Persian.

Saad is the publisher of the book rendered into Persian by Fatemeh Ruholamini.

This book provides a conceptual framework for understanding war rape and its impact, through empirical examination of the case of Bosnia.

Providing a contextual understanding of sexual violence in war, and situating Bosnian war rape in relation to subsequent conflicts, the book offers a methodological outline of how sexual violence in war can be studied from a political-psychological perspective. 

It presents empirical findings from the field that show what war rape can entail in the aftermath of armed conflict for victims and their communities.

Through its comprehensive approach to Bosnian experiences, the volume expands the conceptualization of victimhood and challenges the assumption that sexual violence is a particularly difficult theme to study because of victim silence. 

Rather, the author demonstrates there are many voices that can provide insight and understandings of war rape and its impact without having to compromise the safety and privacy of individual victims. 

Finally, the book shows the ways in which individual experiences of war rape are shaped by national and international discourses on gender, sexuality and politics.

This book will be of interest to students of political psychology, war and conflict studies, European politics, ethnic conflict, politics and IR in general.

“Designing a Study of the Aftermath of the War Rapes in Bosnia”, “Victim and Survivor: Narrated Social Identities of Women who Experienced Rape during the War”, “Therapeutic Work with Victims of Sexual Violence War and Post-War” and “The Political Psychology of War Rape” are among the entries in the table of contents in the book.

Skjelsbæk is a professor of gender studies at the Centre for Gender Research in Oslo. She was an associate professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo between 2015 and 2019. 

She is also a research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and served as the institute’s deputy director from 2009 to 2015. 

Photo: A poster for the Persian translation of Inger Skjelsbæk’s book “The Political Psychology of War Rape”.

MMS/YAW