My research analyses girls’ negotiation of girl power discourses in international politics. My most recent research analysed how girls participating in an international development campaign to fund girls’ education in the Global South adapted it to fit their more radical vision of what girls’ empowerment might look like. I adopt a feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist theoretical approach to explore how girls’ opportunities and capabilities are constructed in the Global North and South, and the agency and creativity they show in expanding those opportunities. My previous research has also analysed the activism of Malala Yousafzai and her negotiation of attempts to co-opt her story into dominant, post-9/11 discourses about Pakistan and Islam.