Editorial Team
Alison Assiter
Alison Assiter is Professor Emerita of Feminist Theory at University of West England, Bristol. She is also a feminist and anti-fundamentalist activist. She writes on political philosophy, feminist thought, Enlightenment philosophy, and in particular on the philosophies of Kant and Kierkegaard. She is the author of a number of books, including Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and Political Theory: Unfinished Selves, Enlightened Women, Althusser and Feminism, and Revisiting Universalism. Alison is co-editor of the series Reframing the Boundaries: Thinking the Political with Rowman and Littlefield International. She is a Fellow of the RSA and Academician of the Academy of the Social Sciences.
Stephen Cowden
Stephen Cowden is from Melbourne, Australia, and has lived in the UK since 1986. He has been involved in left, anti-racist and trade union activism and he has worked as Social Worker from 1992. From 2001-2020 he taught on the BA and MA Social Work programmes at Coventry University, teaching sociology and ethics. His research is concerned with Social Work ethics, Critical Pedagogy and the Sociology of Multiculturalism and Religious Fundamentalism. In 2013 he published (with Gurnam Singh) Acts of Knowing: Critical Pedagogy In, Against and Beyond the University, In 2020 he took up the post of Academic Lead for Social Work at Ruskin College, Oxford. He tweets here.
Rebecca Durand
Rebecca Durand lives in east London and teaches English for Speakers of other Languages (ESOL) at a Further Education college. She is an activist and trade unionist.
Jane Gabriel
Jane Gabriel founded and edited the openDemocracy platform 50.50 from 2007 -2017, publishing women’s critical perspectives globally on social justice, gender and pluralism. Prior to joining openDemocracy she produced and directed 30 documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC international current affairs series ‘Correspondent’. In the 1980s she was a member of the UK’s first all-women television production company, Broadside. She also worked for Granada TV and at Pacifica Radio KPFA.
Rosie Lewis
Rosie Lewis’s work, writing and politics are informed by her roots in anarcha-socialist punk DIY music, collectivist organising and activism. She has over two decades of experience advocating for and movement building with minoritised and migrant women, children and young survivors of violence and abuse and women subject to detention and incarceration. Rosie is currently Co-Director of Project Resist and works in national policy, research and consultancy roles.She has recently attained her Doctorate in Philosophy from Durham University.
Pragna Patel
Pragna Patel is the co-founder and co-director of Project Resist, an organisation focused on work with marginalised and vulnerable black and minority women and girls throughout the UK. She is the former director and founding member of the Southall Black Sisters (SBS) advocacy and campaigning centre where she worked from 1982 to Jan 2022 with a break in 1993 when she left to train and practice as a solicitor. Over those 40 years, she led SBS in some of its most important cases and campaigns on gender-based abuse, immigration and religious fundamentalism. She was also a founding member of Women Against Fundamentalism, and she has written extensively on race, gender and religion. She continues with her work in these areas at Project Resist.
Rosanne Rabinowitz
Roxanne Rabinowitz was a founding collective member of feminist zines such as Feminaxe and Bad Attitude during the 1990s and she continues to campaign around housing, health and austerity. She writes fiction, plus occasional essays and criticism. She is the author of Resonance & Revolt (short fiction collection) and Helen’s Story (novella), which were respectively shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society and Shirley Jackson awards. Rosanne lives in South London, where she works at several occupations including care work, copy writing and freelance editing; she relaxes with whisky, chocolate, strong coffee and loud music. You can sometimes find her at rosannerabinowitz.wordpress.com
Yasmin Rehman
Yasmin Rehman is a feminist, human rights activist and researcher. Yasmin is currently CEO at Juno Women’s Aid in Nottingham/South Nottinghamshire. In addition to her day job, Yasmin is often called as an expert witness in legal cases providing expert reports on faith-based abuse, honour-based abuse, forced marriage and polygamy.
Yasmin has worked for more than 30 years predominantly on violence against women and girls, race, faith and gender, and human rights. She co-edited a book, Moving in the Shadows: Violence in the Lives of Minority Women and Children, contributing two chapters on faith based abuse and polygamy. She is working on a second book examining polygamous and temporary marriage and its links to violence and abuse of women and girls.
Yasmin is currently a Honorary Research at University of Kent and a member of the editorial board of Feminist Dissent. She is a former Board member of Centre for Women’s Justice, a former fellow of the Muslim Institute, EVAW (End Violence against Women Coalition), National Secular Society Council and the Cross-Government Working Group on Hate Crimes.
Yasmin was awarded the Irwin Prize for Secularist of the Year 2017.
Gita Sahgal
Gita Sahgal is a writer and journalist on issues of feminism, fundamentalism, and racism, a director of prize-winning documentary films, and a women’s rights and human rights activist.
Amrita Shodhan
Amrita Shodhan is a researcher and historian. Amrita has worked with different feminist and human rights organisations in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chicago and London for the past thirty odd years. She wishes to put in more time into these commitments. She also teaches part-time at SOAS, University of London and writes about the history of Gujarat and western India.
Rashmi Varma
Rashmi Varma teaches English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK. She is the author of The Postcolonial City and its Subjects (2011) and of the forthcoming Modern Tribal: Representing Indigeneity in Postcolonial India. She has published numerous essays on feminist theory, activism and literature. She lives in London and has been a member of Awaaz-South Asia Watch and Women Against Fundamentalism.
Georgie Wemyss
Georgie Wemyss is Co-director at the Centre for research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London. She previously worked in youth work and adult education. Her publications include The Invisible Empire: White Discourse, Tolerance and Belonging, 2016 and Bordering, 2019.
Nira Yuval-Davis
Nira Yuval-Davis is a diasporic Israeli Jewish sociologist and an anti-racist anti-fundamentalist feminist. She is a founder member of Women Against Fundamentalism and the International Research Network on Women in Militarized Conflict Zones. Currently she is the Director of the research centre on Migration Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London.
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.
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.
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.
