Zilka Spahic Siljak, a visiting lecturer and research assistant at Harvard Divinity School’s Women’s Studies in Religion Program, discusses the accomplishments of women peacemakers in the Balkans.
In her book Shining Humanity—Life Stories of Women Peacebuilders in Bosnia and Herzegovina (forthcoming from Cambridge Scholar Publishing, UK), Siljak explores the stories of 11 extraordinary Bosnian activists. Experiences of both the deeply human and the sacred are revealed through these women’s peacemaking work, which in most cases was not motivated by religion, but by the ethics of care, compassion, and justice.