Dr Elise Stephenson awarded WLIA Fellowship

The Women's Leadership Institute Australia (WLIA) announced on 29 August that GIWL Research Fellow Dr Elise Stephenson has been awarded as their latest WLIA Fellow.

Elise is a multi award-winning gender researcher with an entrepreneurial background and her work focuses on intervening at critical junctures to be at the forefront of projects on gender, sexuality and leadership.

WLIA Fellowships are awarded to those who are leaders in their respective fields, women who have innovative approaches and the courage, conviction and capacity to create real change. Through advocacy, policy and research fellowships, WLIA is building a community of leaders focused on achieving greater gender equality in Australia.

As a political scientist and international relations scholar, Elise focuses on research in frontier international affairs, from researching space policy, to politics and government, diplomacy, national security, intelligence, and the Asia Pacific. In addition to her research, she is the curator of multiple women's and youth leadership and entrepreneurship programs across Southeast Asia, including the Australia-ASEAN Council's flagship program, the Australia-ASEAN Emerging Leaders Program.

Elise was recently awarded the 2022 Fulbright Scholarship funded by Monash University for her research on diversity in space, and her book The Face of the Nation: Women in International Affairs will be published with Oxford University Press later this year.

Elise says that her work "seeks to find critical junctures where we can intervene to ensure gender equality in some of the grand challenges we are facing as a society – whether that’s around climate action, space exploration, our international affairs, or something else"

"Given gender inequality is reinforced by many systems, at many levels, and is entwined with things like colonisation and racism, homophobia and other forms of inequality, our solutions require holistic and multi-pronged effort. I am thrilled to be a WLIA fellow, to both support and be supported by initiatives provoking systemic changes to policy, industry, government and ultimately society. It is through this network of individuals and institutions across Australia (and our world) that we can keep pressure on to create the kind of society where all thrive."

WLIA Fellows include Dr Anjalee de Silva, Emma Dawson, Danielle Wood, Dr Leonora Risse, Dr Ramona Vijeyarasa, Isabelle Reinecke, Andrea Carson and Prof Cordelia Fine.

To learn more about WLIA Fellows, visit the WLIA website.