VIP Lab Affiliated Scholar: Dean Peacock

Dean has used a wide range of social change strategies to successfully advance health, human rights and social justice at the national, regional and global level. These include quantitative and qualitative research; community education and mobilization; legal and policy advocacy; strategic litigation; alliance building; leadership development; media engagement; communication strategies; and the development, implementation and evaluation of workshop curricula, training manuals and toolkits. To ensure public engagement on key issues, he has used the arts widely in his work, producing documentary films, podcasts, digital stories, photovoice initiatives, theater, and community murals, and he has coordinated international photography contests and curated traveling exhibitions on the topic of men and love in times of conflict and polarization.

He has founded and directed many local, national and global initiatives, including the Men Overcoming Violence Youth Program in San Francisco, Sonke Gender Justice in South Africa, the Global MenEngage Alliance now active in 90 countries around the world, the multi-country Mobilising Men for Feminist Peace (MMFP) initiative at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and the Global Community of Practice on Men, Militarism and Peace.

At the VIP Lab, Dean works closely with staff, VIP Lab Fellows and Kroc School students. In 2024, Dean participated in the May and October convenings of the inaugural VIP Lab fellows cohort convenings, reviewed the research of those working on gender related issues, and facilitated discussions of their work. During his time with the VIP Lab, he also convened meetings on men, masculinities and extremist groups in San Diego and co-led a joint VIP Lab, University of Sheffield and WILPF meeting in London on the structural drivers of men’s violence. He is conducting research in three areas that foreground the relationship between power inequalities and violence:

1. Structural drivers of men’s involvement in conflict and what strategies are being used to address these.

2. The gender exploitative marketing of weapons, war and militarised masculinities.

3. Narrative frameworks that increase men’s support for gender equality.

In addition to being an affiliated scholar at the VIP Lab, he is also an Ashoka Fellow, an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town’s School of Public Health, a Commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Global Gun Violence and Health, and has previously been affiliated with the University of California Los Angeles Program in Global Health, the University of California San Francisco’s Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Gender, Violence and Health Center.

Dean has published widely and been profiled in many major news outlets, books and academic journals. Most recently, he has published on the limitations of criminal legal system responses to domestic violence, on the use of the UN Human Rights Council Resolution 35-10 to engage men ending violence against women, on men working for peace and gender equality in Afghanistan, and on the behind the scenes collusion between the entertainment industry, the gun and arms industry and the military to sell weapons and war (forthcoming).

Dean’s extensive background researching masculinities and gender expectations invites new and diverse audiences to consider gendered power structures and pathways to violence, as well as potential responses to them.

The VIP Lab is pleased to present his most recent piece from the Routledge Handbook on Masculinities, Conflict and Peacebuilding in which he and his co-authors make the case for a stronger focus on the structural drivers of men’s involvement in armed conflict. This piece is a shorter version of a more detailed analysis that the VIP Lab will publish in the summer of 2025.

2025 Partial List of Activities and Events

Panel Discussion on Masculinities, Conflict and Peacebuilding, University of the Western Cape, April 2025

Dean launched two anthologies on men and masculinities: The Routledge International Handbook on Masculinities Studies and The Routledge Handbook on Masculinities, Conflict and Peacebuilding. The panel was chaired by Dr. Carmine Rustin and included Dr. Kopano Ratele, Dr. Tamara Shefer, Oska Paul, and Dean Peacock, all authors in these two collections.

Conflict Research Network West Africa (CORN)

Dean presented on a panel titled “Geopolitical Turbulence: Africa’s Strategic Response in a Shifting World Order” chaired by Dr. Gbemisola Abiola, PhD and Dr. Timipere Felix Allison, PhD and with Dr. Gavaza Maluleke, Dr. Moses Ochonu all joining as panelists. CORN was co-founded by Tarila Marclint Ebiede, a 2024 VIP Lab Fellow.

UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s 2025 Conflict Conference, Glasgow, Scotland

During the conference titled Security, Growth and Global Disorder: Responding to Conflict amid Global Change, Dean presented on the topic of “Men, Non-Violence & Peace: Understanding and Addressing Gender Norms and Structural Drivers of Men’s Violence.”

Peace in Our Cities Regional Member Workshop, “Urbanization and Violence Reduction,” Nairobi, Kenya

Dean participated in a panel focused on preventing gender based violence in cities together with colleagues from Oakland, California’s Department of Violence Prevention, the Red Dot Foundation, and the SASA! program in Makindye and Rubaga divisions in Kampala, Uganda. Peace in Our Cities was founded by Rachel Locke, Director of the VIP Lab.

University of Cape Town’s School of Public Health

Dean presented to the MPH class on the topic of the commercial and social drivers of gendered ill-health and violence.

2024 Partial List of Activities and Events

Exploration of structural approaches to addressing men’s violence and involvement in armed conflict

Dean co-convened a meeting in London in November together with the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, the Women’s International League for Peace and the VIP lab. The meeting focused on the reasons behind the over-emphasis on masculinities and relative paucity of research and interventions focused on the structural drivers of men’s involvement in armed conflict and sought to identify strategies that can be used to address the structural forces driving young men into armed conflict.

Screening of Power on Patrol, a four part documentary on efforts to increase men’s support for peace and gender equality

In collaboration with the Kroc School’s Gender Advocacy Group, Dean hosted a screening of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s feature length documentary film, Power on Patrol. The film explores the forces militarizing men’s identities globally and depicts the remarkable women and men who are actively working to counter militarized masculinities and mobilize men for peace in Colombia, Cameroon, Afghanistan and Democratic Republic of Congo. The screening was followed by a facilitated discussion with Kroc School staff and students.

Roundtable on Male Supremacy

In the spring of 2024, Dean hosted a hybrid roundtable at the Kroc School to explore potential areas of collaboration for WILPF and the VIP Lab to address violent extremism and male supremacy in a system of patriarchy, neocolonialism and harmful masculinities that drive violence and conflict, and where feminist peace may hold potential responses. Discussants drew attention to a nexus of connected issues, such as trauma, poverty, land dispossession, and the aggrieved entitlement that feed harmful stereotypes and expectations.

The roundtable sought to understand the apparent growth and increasing coordination of male supremacist groups in the US and beyond, while also exploring the relationship between male supremacist groups and other extremist groups. Discussants suggested that power shifts between men and women corresponded to feelings of loss of control and status, resulting in grievances that are driving factors for the growing misogyny and antipathy towards new socio-economic dynamics.

Global Meeting on the Gender Exploitative Marketing of Weapons and War

Current gender dynamics in gun marketing and the public relations practices of militaries perpetuate harmful stereotypes, reinforce unequal power dynamics, glorify weapons and war, and normalize the association of masculinity with guns. To understand and think through potential advocacy strategies, Dean led a three day convening in Geneva co-hosted by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s Mobilising Men for Feminist Peace Initiative, the Gender Equitable Network for Small Arms Control, Pathfinders for Peaceful Societies and Small Arms Survey. The meeting focused on the nexus of militainment, the arms industry and the marketing of militarized masculinities, gun ownership and violence. The dialogue brought together organizations such as Brady, Everytown, Sandy Hook Promise, Gun Free South Africa, Sou da Paz, the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), UN Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and UNDP South Eastern and Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SEESAC), amongst others. Presentations focused on understanding widely used marketing practices that exploit expectations of manhood and masculinities, and play on fears to increase the demand for weapons. Solutions and recommendations from United Nations bodies and others sought to explore opportunities for collaboration to foster societal change and gender equality through a human rights lens. Read the summary meeting report.

2023 Partial List of Activities and Events

The Mobilising Men for Feminist Peace Community of Practice

Dean co-convened a meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia, which brought together organizations endeavoring to counter militarized masculinities and mobilize men for feminist peace. The meeting brought together almost 30 participants representing nearly 20 organizations from Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. Participants agreed to establish an ongoing community of practice on militarized masculinities and ways to mobilize men for feminist peace. This group now includes nearly one hundred practitioners and has led to many new partnerships focused on research, advocacy, and movement building. Read the meeting report.