Jocelyn Kelly wins 2019 Paula Kantor Award

Dr. Jocelyn Kelly is one of two winners of the 2019 Paula Kantor Award. The award was created to honor Paula Kantor, a former ICRW researcher who was killed in 2015 while working in Afghanistan. Paula was a leading expert on gender issues in international development, with nearly 20 years of experience in policy and program research related to integrating gender into agriculture and rural development. Dr. Kantor’s work was largely driven by her passion to improve lives in the global south, especially those of women and girls.

Dr. Jocelyn Kelly in the Director for Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s (HHI) Women in War program, where she designs and implements projects to examine issues relating to gender, peace and security in fragile states. Dr. Kelly’s work focuses on understanding and preventing gender-based violence (GBV) and human trafficking in complex crises, with an emphasis on specially examining mechanisms for social cohesion and resilience. She has been conducting health-related research using qualitative and quantitative research methods for over a decade in national and international settings.

She has given briefings related to gender and security to the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. State Department, USAID, the World Bank, OFDA, the Woodrow Wilson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Dr. Kelly’s current research interests include: promoting and measuring GBV risk mitigation in humanitarian emergencies; understanding the continuum of GBV before, during and after humanitarian crisis; measuring and promoting social cohesion and community resilience as a pathway to reducing violence; and finding holistic and innovative pathways to promoting trauma healing and community-building after conflict.