Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Südosteuropäische Geschichte

Baillie Bell graduated from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, with bachelor’s degrees in the fields of International Relations and Health Sciences. Thereafter, she earned a Master’s degree from the University of Ottawa, Canada, in History with a specialization in Women’s Studies. Her Master’s thesis, titled The War Time Rape Narrative in the Democratic Republic of Congo, focused on the disconnect between international funding organizations and women’s local realities and intervention needs as victims of war within the Great Lakes region of Africa. She holds a second Master’s degree in Global History, jointly awarded by the Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Her thesis, titled The Women of the Bosnian War: Disrupting Dominant Narratives of Violence, offers an alternative perspective on women’s wartime experiences, focusing on the myriad of ways women contributed to the war as political supporters, combatants, and civilian defenders.

Her PhD project is a continuation of her Masters research, presenting an analysis of female perpetrators of violence during the Bosnian war. Examining the contention that women could only be victims of this war, her research focuses on women’s violent agency, asking the questions: what was the nature and extent of women’s violence during the Bosnian war? What motivated them? Were their forms of perpetration different than men’s? How did gender and societal roles influence their participation and understanding of these violent actions? Using a system of case comparison, based on witness testimonies from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber archives, it highlights instances of women’s violence, documenting the quantitative consistency and qualitative methods of their participation. By analyzing the detailed accounts of violence within these archives, the subtleties of women’s actions can be understood within both the larger political context of the war and the post-war justice system, contributing to global discussions on the agency and culpability of women’s violence and their legacy in the Bosnian war.