We believe in the power of storytelling.
Global Women’s Narratives Project
We engage the personal and collective power of women’s lived experiences to create a database of narratives that storytellers, policymakers, scholars, lawyers, and human rights advocates can use to affect change.
Our mission is to amplify women’s voices and experiences through the power of storytelling. Women’s lived experiences are underrepresented. Whether in conflict studies, medicine, religion, or global activism, this gap in knowledge is harmful across a broad cross-section of disciplines. Our project invites partners to spend one hour with a woman to better understand the joys and challenges of her life and what is potentially unique from men’s experiences in the context of global ethical inquiry. Grounded in our combined research in narrative ethics in medicine, international human rights law, anthropology, economic development, religion, and psychology, our hope is that this shared interview and reflection will inform and help connect education and research to the practical experiences of women in their daily lives.
We are pleased to share our recent project with UNESCO and the Institute of Social Ethics, University of Lucerne for Geneva Peace Week. GWNP Thembela Lubimbi participated from Zimbabwe. A special thank you to Dr. Evelyne Tauchnitz, our Advisory Board member from Oxford Global PeaceTech Project and Lucerne Graduate School in Ethics, and our UNESCO collaborators, Vincent Defourny and Edouard Joubeaud.
What We Believe
“If I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned this: A question is a powerful thing, a mighty use of words. Questions elicit answers in their likeness. Answers mirror the questions they rise or fall to meet…it's hard to transcend a combative question. But it’s hard to resist a generous question. We all have it in us to formulate questions that invite honesty, dignity and revelation. There is something redemptive and life-giving about asking a better question.”
—Krista Tippett in Becoming Wise
Our Team
Founded by Dr. Lyn Boyd-Judson (Oxford, USC, UNESCO), the initiative is overseen with partners Dr. Patricia Owens (Oxford), Asil Sidahmed, and a global advisory board. With editorial teams in Oxford and Los Angeles, the administration of the narratives project is managed by volunteer editors comprised primarily of teams of students from the University of Oxford, Wellesley College, University of Southern California, University of California Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, and volunteers from around the world.
Our Partnerships
Our partners are connected to local nonprofits and universities in Oxford, the United States, Zimbabwe, Georgia, Brazil, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Ukraine, Greece, Ghana, Bosnia, and Ethiopia via our Advisory Board members. Our volunteer editorial teams work closely with the authors of the narratives over a multi-phased process. We have interviewed combatants, peace activists, religious leaders, rural coffee growers, former political prisoners, refugees, mothers, daughters, and politicians from the around the world.
Our Narratives
ORGANIZED BY THEMES:
WAR & PEACE — RELIGION — WOMEN IN POLITICS — GLOBAL HEALTH — IDENTITY — GENDER BASED VIOLENCE — LIFE’S WORK
GWNP launch as an archival website in 2025.
Danielle Perez, stand-up comedian and disabled woman, interviewed by Elisa D'Angelo in Los Angeles, CA.
Hillside in Bosnia where Lena Perenchio listened to six women's narratives about their lives and experiences during their war.
Tanvi Kodali, Wellesley student and GWNP senior editor, interviews Rohingya women refugees.