Melissa Johnston is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Monash GPS with two main research areas. The first area examines the pivotal role of misogyny and violence against women in contemporary violent extremism, populism and right wing politics. In recent research, Melissa has investigated the empirical and analytical links between violence against women and violent extremism in Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Libya.
The second area is the political economy of post-conflict rebuilding. Her doctoral dissertation, winner of the 2019 Australian Political Studies Association thesis prize, applies a feminist political economy approach to account for the uneven outcomes gender programming by international development agencies. It argues the outcomes of international interventions on gender responsive budgeting, laws against domestic violence and microfinance are shaped by power relations between men and women in a setting of elite dominance. In the Timor-Leste case specifically, the politic
