International Advisory Board
Karima Bennoune is a Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research Scholar and the University of California -Davis. She is the author of "Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism" (www.karimabennoune.com). A former Amnesty International Legal advisor, and former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, she currently sits on the board of the Network of Women Living Under Muslim Laws.
Chetan Bhatt is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published widely in several areas, including the religious right in South Asia and the Middle East, war and conflict, human rights, social theory and politics.
Sara Hossain is a fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK where she serves as convenor of the Power and Popular Politics cluster. Sara Hossain is a barrister practicing in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. She is a partner at the law firm of Dr. Kamal Hossain and Associates (www.khossain.com), and currently serves pro bono as the Honorary Executive Director of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (www.blast.org.bd). She is involved with several human rights organisations, including Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), the Advisory Committee of the Women’s International Coalition on Gender Justice (WICG) and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).
Zeba Imam has been teaching at the Advanced Centre for Women's Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences since 2012. She holds a doctoral degree from the Department of Communication, Texas A&M University. Zeba's research interests include gender studies, feminist perspectives on citizenship, identity and religious nationalist discourses.
Deniz Kandiyoti is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and editor-in-chief of Central Asian Survey. She holds degrees from the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was also on the faculty of the Middle East Technical University (1969-74) and Boğaziçi University (1974-1980) in Turkey.. She is the author of Cariyeler, Bacilar, Yurttaslar ( 1997) the editor of Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey (2002), Gendering the Middle East (1996) , Women, Islam and the State (1991) and of numerous articles on gender, Islam, post-coloniality, post-Soviet transition in Central Asia and gender and conflict in Afghanistan. She also contributes to Gender, Politics and Religion on 50.50 open Democracy where she monitored the gender effects of the Arab uprisings.
Kathleen McPhillips is a sociologist of religion and gender at the University of Newcastle in Australia.She has written extensively on women, religion and discrimination. She is the author of numerous books and articles including the forthcoming book with Naomi Goldenberg The End of Religion: Feminist Reappraisals of the State. Kathleen's current research involves an ethnographic investigation of the Catholic Church in its representations before the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Srila Roy is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She uses a postcolonial and transnational feminist lens to research a number of themes including gender and sexuality; cultural memory, violence and trauma; the affective economies of social movements; and the politics of development and neoliberalism, much of which takes as its starting point the contemporary socio-political history of India/South Asia. She is the author of Remembering Revolution: Gender, Violence and Subjectivity in India’s Naxalbari Movement (OUP, 2012), editor of New South Asian Feminisms (Zed, 2012) and co-editor of New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualising Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India (OUP 2015). She is currently writing a monograph on feminist politics in contemporary India.
Mariz Tadroz is a Institute of Development Studies research fellow specialising in the politics and human development of the Middle East. Areas of specialisation include democratisation, Islamist politics, gender, sectarianism, human security and religion and development. Mariz is also Co-Leader of the Power and Popular Politics Cluster.
Meredith Tax is a US writer and feminist activist, founding President of Women’s WORLD, a global free speech network of feminist writers, 1995-2005. Her books include The Rising of the Women, a history book; two novels; and Double Bind: the Muslim Right, the Anglo-American Left and Universal Human Rights, published by the Centre for Secular Space, of which she was a founding member.
Naomi Goldenberg is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies and former Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her current interests in teaching and writing pertain to the emerging field of ‘critical religion’ that focuses on the construction of the category of religion and its relationship to other categories such as the secular, the state, identity and politics. With Trevor Stack and Timothy Fitzgerald, she is co-editor of Religion as a Category of Governance and Sovereignty (Brill, 2015) and is at work with Kathleen McPhillips of the University of Newcastle in Australia on a collection titled “The End of Religion: Feminst Reappraisals of the State” (forthcoming from Ashgate).
Pratiksha Baxi is Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India. Baxi holds a doctoral degree from the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Her book, Public Secrets of Law: Rape Trials in India, was published by the Oxford University Press in 2014. Baxi’s research interests include critical perspectives on medical jurisprudence, ethnographies of courts, sociology of violence, gender studies, politics of judicial reform, judicial iconography, courtroom architecture and feminist legal theory.
Maryam Namazie is Spokesperson for Fitnah, Equal Rights Now, One Law for All and Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. She hosts and produces Bread and Roses TV; is on the International Advisory Board of the Raif Badawi Foundation for Freedom; a Fellow at the Secular Global Institute; Central Committee member of the Worker-communist Party of Iran; National Secular Society Honorary Associate; a Patron of London Black Atheists, amongst others. She was awarded Journalist of the Year at the Dods Women in Public Life Awards (2013); selected one of the top 45 women of the year by Elle magazine Quebec (2007); and awarded the NSS Secularist of the Year Award (2005). She has co-authored Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights (One Law for All, June 2010),Enemies Not Allies: The Far-Right (One Law for All, August 2011), and The Political and Legal Status of Apostates in Islam (CEMB, December 2013). She also has an essay entitled ‘When the Hezbollah came to my School’ in 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (Wiley-Blackwell, October 2009) and is featured in A Better Life: A Hundred Atheists Speak out on Joy and Meaning in a World Without God (2013). Previously, Namazie was the elected Executive Director of the International Federation of Iranian Refugees, a refugee run organisation with 60 branches in 15 countries worldwide for 8 years.
Harsh Kapoor is an independent researcher and counter-information worker with a long standing interest in documenting right wing politics and fundamentalist movements in India and South Asia and elsewhere. He is the founder and editor South Asia Citizens Web (sacw.net) and of Communalism Watch (http://communalism.blogspot.com/).
Amel Grami is a Professor of Islamic Studies and Gender Studies at The University of Manouba, Tunis. She is also a human-women rights activist, author of many books, and member of The High Committee of Human Rights in Tunisia. As an active member of research group ' Religious Discourses', she is responsible for the project ''Deconstruction of Religious programs in Arab Media". Additionally, she is a columnist for Le Maghreb (Tunisian Newspaper), and Eshorouk (Egyptian Newspaper.
Professor Sylvia Tamale is a leading African feminist who teaches law at Makerere University in Uganda. Her research interests include “Women in Politics,” “Gender, Law & Sexuality” and “Feminist Jurisprudence.” Prof. Tamale has published extensively in these and other areas, and has served as Visiting Professor in several academic institutions globally and on several international human rights boards. She was the first female dean at the School of Law at Makerere. Prof. Tamale holds a Bachelor of Laws from Makerere University, a Masters in Law from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in Sociology and Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota.
Sadia Abbas is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Program in Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University. She specialises in postcolonial literature and theory, the culture and politics of Islam in modernity, early modern English literature, and the history of twentieth-century criticism. She is the author of the book, At Freedom's Limit: Islam and the Postcolonial Predicament, and is working on a book on Greece and postcolonialism.
Shahrzad Mojab, scholar, teacher, and activist, is internationally known for her work on the impact of war, displacement, and violence on women's learning and education; gender, state, migration and diaspora; Marxist feminism and anti-racism pedagogy. She has published extensively in these areas. She is professor of Adult Education and Community Development and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the former Director of the Women and Gender Institute, University of Toronto and the recipient of the Royal Society of Canada Award in Gender Studies in 2010. Her books include Youth as/in Crisis: Young People, Public Policy, and the Politics of Learning (co-edited with Sara Carpenter, 2017); Revolutionary Learning: Marxism, Feminism and Knowledge (co-authored with Sara Carpenter, 2017); Marxism and Feminism (editor, 2015); Educating from Marx: Race, Gender and Learning (co-edited with Sara Carpenter, 2012) and Women, War, Violence, and Learning (editor, 2010); Violence in the Name of Honour: Theoretical and Political Challenges (co-edited with Nahla Abdo, 2004); Of Property and Propriety: The Role of Gender and Class in Imperialism and Nationalism (c-edited with Himani Bannerji and Judith Whitehead, 2001); and in 2001 edited the first anthology on Kurdish women, Women of a Non-State Nation: The Kurds.
Sonia Mehta is founder, curator and producer of South Asian Women’s Creative Collective - SAWCC –London. She has worked and campaigned extensively in community development, as well the arts sector. Previously, she managed the education wing of the acclaimed band Asian Dub Foundation – ADFED. Sonia dedicates her time between ensuring women are at the centre of their practice, enquiry of narratives and action around race and inclusion and examining the intersectionality of race, class and gender in the diaspora through SAWCC and as an independent consultant.
