Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppression; and the relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social locations such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and disability.
Nancy Fraser is an American philosopher, critical theorist, feminist, and the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School in New York City. Widely known for her critique of identity politics and her philosophical work on the concept of justice, Fraser is also a staunch critic of contemporary liberal feminism and its abandonment of social justice issues. Fraser holds honorary doctoral degrees from four universities in three countries, and won the 2010 Alfred Schutz Prize in Social Philosophy from the American Philosophical Association. She was President of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division for the 2017–2018 term.
Ann Rosamund Oakley is a British sociologist, feminist, and writer. She is professor and founder-director of the Social Science Research Unit at the UCL Institute of Education of the University College London, and in 2005 partially retired from full-time academic work to concentrate on her writing, especially on new novels.
Feminist philosophy is an approach to philosophy from a feminist perspective and also the employment of philosophical methods to feminist topics and questions. Feminist philosophy involves both reinterpreting philosophical texts and methods in order to supplement the feminist movement and attempts to criticise or re-evaluate the ideas of traditional philosophy from within a feminist framework.
Judith Ann Tickner is an Anglo-American feminist international relations (IR) theorist. Tickner is a distinguished scholar in residence at the School of International Services, American University, Washington DC.
Rosi Braidotti is a contemporary philosopher and feminist theoretician. Born in Italy, she studied in Australia and France and works in the Netherlands. Braidotti is currently Distinguished University Professor Emerita at Utrecht University, where she has taught since 1988. She was professor and the founding director of Utrecht University's women's studies programme (1988-2005) and founding director of the Centre for the Humanities (2007-2016). She has been awarded honorary degrees from Helsinki (2007) and Linkoping (2013); she is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA) since 2009, and a Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE) since 2014. Her main publications include Nomadic Subjects (2011) and Nomadic Theory (2011), both with Columbia University Press, The Posthuman (2013), Posthuman Knowledge (2019), and Posthuman Feminism (2022) with Polity Press. In 2016, she co-edited Conflicting Humanities with Paul Gilroy, and The Posthuman Glossary in 2018 with Maria Hlavajova, both with Bloomsbury Academic.
Sylvia Theresa Walby is a British sociologist, currently Professor of Criminology at Royal Holloway University of London. She has an Honorary Doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for distinction in sociology. She is noted for work in the fields of the domestic violence, patriarchy, gender relations in the workplace and globalisation.
Feminist epistemology is an examination of epistemology from a feminist standpoint.
Steve Yearley is a British sociologist. He is Professor of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge at the University of Edinburgh, a post he has held since 2005. He has been designated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is currently Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.
Beverley Skeggs is a British sociologist, noted as one of the foremost feminist sociologists in the world. Currently, she works as a "Distinguished Professor" in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University, developing a Center for Social Inequalities in the North West of England. She continues to run the "Economics of Care" theme at the International Inequalities centre at the London School of Economics (LSE) and is a visiting professor at Goldsmiths University. She has been the head of two of the UK's leading Sociology Departments, at the University of Manchester and Goldsmiths, as well as co-director of Lancaster's Women's Studies. In addition, she played a part in transforming Britain's oldest sociology journal, The Sociological Review, into an independent foundation devoted to opening up critical social science and supporting social scientists.
Sylvia Rosila Tamale is a Ugandan academic, and human rights activist in Uganda. She was the first woman dean in the law faculty at Makerere University, Uganda.
Feminist political theory is an area of philosophy that focuses on understanding and critiquing the way political philosophy is usually construed and on articulating how political theory might be reconstructed in a way that advances feminist concerns. Feminist political theory combines aspects of both feminist theory and political theory in order to take a feminist approach to traditional questions within political philosophy.
Sue Scott is a British sociologist and feminist whose research has focused primarily on sexuality, gender and risk. She is a visiting professor at the University of Newcastle and an honorary professor at the University of Helsinki. From 2013–2019 she was honorary professor in the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York. She was president of the British Sociological Association 2007–2009 and president of the European Sociological Association 2017–2019. She is a co-founder and managing editor of the Social Science Research Magazine Discover Society.
Shirin M. Rai, is an interdisciplinary scholar who works across the political science and international relations boundaries. She is known for her research on the intersections between international political economy, globalisation, post-colonial governance, institutions and processes of democratisation and gender regimes. She was a professor of politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, and is the founding director of Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development (WICID).
The School of Social and Political Science (SSPS) at the University of Edinburgh is a unit within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Its constituent departments conduct research and teaching in the following disciplines:
Ann Phoenix, is a British psychologist and academic, whose research focuses on psychosocial issues related to identity. She is Professor of Psychosocial Studies at the Institute of Education, University College London. She was previously ESRC Professorial Fellow for the Transforming Experiences research programme. She was previously Co-Director of the Thomas Coram Research Unit, and Reader in Psychology at the Open University.
Feminist institutionalism is a new institutionalist approach that looks at how gender norms operate within institutions and how institutional processes construct and maintain gender power dynamics. Feminist institutionalism focuses on how institutions are gendered and how their formal and informal rules play a part in shaping political life. It offers a new way of interpreting the formation of institutions that goes beyond traditional views by accounting for the gendered stigma and gendered outcomes that comes with institutions. As a result, feminist institutionalism is changing the face of various institutions by providing awareness into their very own dynamics of inclusion and exclusion.
Chris (Christine) Beasley is an Australian researcher whose interdisciplinary work crosses the fields of social and political theory, gender and sexuality studies and cultural studies. She is Emerita Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Adelaide. She is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. In 2018, Beasley was named the leading researcher in feminism and women's studies in Australia based on major journal publications in the field. Beasley was the founder and inaugural co-Director of the Fay Gale Centre from 2009 to 2013.
Mona Lena Krook is an American political scientist. She is a Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, where she is also the Chair of the Women and Politics Ph.D. Program. She studies the political representation of women, particularly gender quotas in governments and the phenomenon of violence against women in politics.
Louise A. Chappell is an Australian political scientist. She is a Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, where she is also the director of the Australian Human Rights Institute. She studies gender and politics, the politics of the International Criminal Court, and the politics of Australia in comparative perspective.
