Kozue Akibayashi

Kozue Akibayashi is a professor at the Graduate School of Global Studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. Her research and activism is based on analyzing militarism, militarization, demilitarization, and decolonization, from a gender perspective. Gender analysis of peace and security is acknowledged as essential in addressing such issues as gender-based and sexual violence in conflicts or conflict-affected areas.

She is an Asia-Pacific board representative and former International President of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and has been a member of the Japan section of WILPF for two decades.

She currently serves on the steering committee of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing for peace on the Korean Peninsula. In 2015, she was in the delegation of 30 international women peacebuilders who crossed the DMZ on a call for lasting peace.

A highlight of Kozue’s research is an analysis of “Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence,” a feminist peace movement in Okinawa, Japan where the U.S. military was stationed for more than seven decades.