Cynthia Cockburn

Cynthia Kay Ellis was born in Barrow upon Soar, a village in rural Leicestershire, to father Shirley Ellis and mother Constance (née King). She attended Malvern St James Girls School.

Cockburn was a researcher in the fields of gender, war and peace-making, labour processes and trade unionism, and refugees. She was active in the international women's peace movement.{{Cite news|url=https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399218/looking-to-london/|title=Looking to London|work=Pluto Press|access-date=24 November 2017|language=en-US}}

Cockburn was a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at City University London and honorary professor in the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender at the University of Warwick.{{Cite web|url=https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/staff/|title=People - Department of Sociology|website=University of Warwick|language=en-GB|access-date=24 November 2017}}{{Cite web|url=http://wilpf.org/wilpf_academic/cynthia-cockburn/|title=Cynthia Cockburn|website=WILPF|language=en-US|access-date=24 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201034020/http://wilpf.org/wilpf_academic/cynthia-cockburn/|archive-date=1 December 2017|url-status=dead}}

An active antimilitarist, she was involved in a number of peace and anti-war organisations. She visited the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp between 1981 and 2000.{{cite news |last1=Al-Ali |first1=Nadje |title=Cynthia Cockburn obituary |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/24/cynthia-cockburn-obituary |access-date=5 April 2025 |publisher=The Guardian |date=24 September 2019}} In 1981, she was part of a group of women who founded Women Against War in the Gulf, and in response to the Bosnian Yugoslav wars, the group evolved to become Women Against War Crime. From 1993, they began calling the group Women in Black in support of other international peace movement efforts, specifically those taking place in Israel, Italy, and Yugoslavia.{{Cite web|url=https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/cynthia-cockburn-women-in-black|title=Cynthia Cockburn discusses Women in Black|website=The British Library|language=en|access-date=24 November 2017|archive-date=8 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191208180155/https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/cynthia-cockburn-women-in-black|url-status=dead}} She was also involved with Women Against Fundamentalism, the European Forum of Socialist Feminists,{{Cite web|url=https://www.bl.uk/people/cynthia-cockburn|title=Cynthia Cockburn|website=The British Library|language=en|access-date=24 November 2017|archive-date=8 April 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160408063229/http://www.bl.uk/people/cynthia-cockburn|url-status=dead}} and was a member of the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom.{{Cite web|url=http://wilpf.org/academic-network/members/|title=Academics|website=WILPF|language=en-US|access-date=24 November 2017}}

As both an academic and activist, Cockburn presented talks at a number of conferences. In May 2017, she was honoured at the Gender and Peace Conference in Istanbul, and presented the keynote address.{{Cite web|url=http://vavcd.sabanciuniv.edu/announcements-detail/68509|title=Gender & Peace Conference, 6-7 May 2017, Istanbul|website=Sabanci University|language=en|access-date=24 November 2017}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiOH5qWS-50|title=Cynthia Cockburn's Keynote Speech at Gender and Peace Conference in Istanbul, May 2017|website=YouTube|access-date=24 November 2017}}

Cockburn was selected to be featured in the British Library project, 'Sisterhood and After', an oral history archive of feminists active in the 1970–1980s.

On 14 October 2017, the journal Feminist Review celebrated Cockburn's contribution to feminist scholarship by co-hosting an event with the SOAS Centre for Gender Studies and provided free access to a number of her published articles.{{Cite web|url=http://www.palgrave.com/us/journal/41305/volumes-issues/collection-celebrating-cynthia-cockburn|title=Celebrating Cynthia Cockburn|website=Feminist Review {{!}} palgrave|access-date=24 November 2017|archive-date=1 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201040035/http://www.palgrave.com/us/journal/41305/volumes-issues/collection-celebrating-cynthia-cockburn|url-status=dead}}

Cockburn was widely published in academic journals, including in Feminist Review,{{Cite journal|last=Cockburn|first=Cynthia|date=2013|title=what became of 'frontline feminism'? a retroperspective on post-conflict Belfast|jstor=24571901|journal=Feminist Review|volume=105|issue=105|pages=103–121|doi=10.1057/fr.2013.20}} Gender & Development,{{Cite journal|last=Cockburn|first=Cynthia|date=12 November 2013|title=War and security, women and gender: an overview of the issues|url=https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/war-and-security-women-and-gender-an-overview-of-the-issues-305231|journal=Gender & Development|volume= 21| issue = 3|pages=433–452|doi=10.1080/13552074.2013.846632}} Journal of Classical Sociology,{{Cite journal|last=Cockburn|first=Cynthia|date=29 May 2012|title=Who are "we"?', asks one of us|journal=Journal of Classical Sociology|volume= 12| issue = 2|pages=205–219|doi=10.1177/1468795X12441963}} Peace in Process.{{Cite journal|last=Cockburn|first=Cynthia|date=February 2015|title=Transversal Politics: a practice of Peace|url=http://www.icip-perlapau.cat/numero22/articles_centrals/article_central_1/|journal=Peace in Process|volume=22|access-date=24 November 2017|archive-date=22 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200122052814/http://www.icip-perlapau.cat/numero22/articles_centrals/article_central_1/|url-status=dead}} She also wrote for The Guardian,{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/profile/cynthia-cockburn|title=Cynthia Cockburn|website=The Guardian|access-date=24 November 2017}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/27/domestic-violence-prevention-protection|title=Domestic violence must be about prevention as well as protection|date=27 February 2014|work=The Guardian|access-date=24 November 2017|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}} Red Pepper,{{Cite web|url=http://www.redpepper.org.uk/guerrilla-woolfare/|title=Guerrilla woolfare|last=Cockburn|first=Cynthia|date=15 July 2014|website=Red Pepper|language=en-US|access-date=24 November 2017}} Peace News,{{Cite web|url=https://www.peacenews.info/taxonomy/term/1133|title=Cockburn, Cynthia, Peace News|website=www.peacenews.info|language=en|access-date=24 November 2017}} IndyMedia UK,{{Cite web|url=https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/02/474165.html|title=The Trials of Pinar Selek|last=Cockburn|first=Cynthia|website=UK Indymedia|language=en|access-date=24 November 2017}} and OpenDemocracy.{{Cite web|url=https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/cynthia-cockburn|title=Cynthia Cockburn|website=openDemocracy|language=en|access-date=24 November 2017}}

Cockburn published a number of academic books including:

• The Local State: Management of Cities and People (1977, Pluto Press)
• In and Against the State (1981, Pluto Press)
• Brothers: Male Dominance and Technical Change (1983, Pluto Press)
• Machinery of Dominance: Women, Men and Technical Know-how (1985, Pluto Press)
• Two-Track Training: Sex Inequalities and the Youth Training Scheme (1987, Macmillan)
• In the Way of Women: Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organizations (1991, Macmillan)
• Gender and Technology in the Making (1993, Sage Publications, with Susan Ormrod)
• Bringing Technology Home: Gender and Technology in a Changing Europe (1994, Oxford University Press, with Ruza Furst-Dilic)
• Women in the Europeanizing of Industrial Relations: A Study in Five Member States (1994, European Commission, with Maria Carmen Alemany Gomez, Myriam Bergamaschi, Hildegard Maria Nickel, and Chantal Rogerat)
• The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict (1998, Zed Books)
• The Postwar Moment: Militaries, Masculinities and International Peacekeeping (2002, Lawrence and Wishar, with Dubravka Zarkov)
• The Line: Women, Partition and the Gender Order in Cyprus (2004, Zed Books)
• From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis (2007, Zed Books)
• Antimilitarism: Political and Gender Dynamics of Peace Movements (2012, Palgrave Macmillan)
• Looking to London: Stories of War, Escape and Asylum (2017, Pluto Press)

Publications by Cockburn have been translated into German, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Georgian, Bosnian, Serbo-Croat, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish, Korean, and Catalan.{{Cite web|url=http://www.cynthiacockburn.org/notowar/publications.html|title=Bibliography|website=Cynthia Cockburn|access-date=24 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201041048/http://www.cynthiacockburn.org/notowar/publications.html|archive-date=1 December 2017|url-status=dead}}

{{reflist|30em}}

• [http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/02610150610679574 "Interview Cynthia Cockburn on women, equality and social science research: Professional insights"] by Gill Kirton (2006) in Equal Opportunities International, Vol. 25 Issue: 2, pp. 150–157

• [http://www.cynthiacockburn.org/ Personal website]
• [http://london.womeninblack.org/ Women in Black - London]

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Category:1934 births

Category:2019 deaths

Category:Academics of the University of Warwick

Category:Academics of City, University of London

Category:Anti-militarism

Category:British anti-war activists

Category:British feminist writers

Category:British women's rights activists

Category:People from Barrow upon Soar