PhD thesis defence by Liv Kristine Moe
In 2015, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2242, which calls for concrete action by States to integrate their agendas on women, peace, and security with policies on counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism. The counter-terrorism regime, and in particular, national Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) policies, have been criticised for relying on securitising, racialised, and gender essentialist foundations. This thesis investigates the national implementation of this resolution in Norway and Canada by drawing on and building upon poststructuralist feminist theories and decentred security governance. I explore how notions of gender are performed, stabilised, and/or transformed through P/CVE policies and practices.
My thesis aims to answer three broad research questions:
- How do pre-emptive security laws and P/CVE policies and practices intersect with gender norms in Canada and Norway?
- How are preconceived notions of gender shaping or misshaping P/CVE strategies in Canada and Norway
- How has UN Security Council Resolution 2242 been implemented on different scales?
This thesis tells a story about how society changes and is shaped by national and global security concerns, and how, despite increasing gender equality, traditional gender stereotypes continue to influence security decisions. These decisions have implications wider than those of countering terrorism. It is a story of how certain public spaces go from recreational to monitored, and how some characteristics deem people suspicious, innocent, threatening, or insignificant. It is about trust-building in a climate of security and about the subjectivity of local security governance. Through a qualitative study I provide a multi-sited and multi-scalar analysis. Empirically, I draw on fieldwork in Norway and Canada, which was carried out between 2022 and 2024, conducting 40 relational interviews with practitioners, policymakers, diplomats, and the police, as well as analysing policy documents, action plans, and legal documents.
Liv Moe is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute. Her research focuses on gender, global governance, and how it interacts with national security practices. For her doctoral thesis, she conducted multi-sited fieldwork in Norway and Canada, exploring how gender interacts with policies and practices of preventing and countering violent extremism. Prior to joining the EUI, Liv gained an LLM in International Law and a Master of International Security at the University of Kent. Since August 2025, she has worked as an acquisitions editor at Scandinavian University Press.