Director and Professor Elora Shehabuddin

My research has focused on Bengali women’s activism, in relation to formal politics, legal reform, development, and feminism. In my recent and current projects, I’ve tried to broaden the scope of these long standing interests across time and space by looking at both the deeper history of South Asian women’s activism and the complex network of international (or transnational) connections forged by these activists.

Elora is a Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Global Studies, the Director of Global Studies and Global Poverty and Practice, and the Director of the Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies.

Education

Ph. D. in Politics, Princeton University, 2000

B.A. in Social Studies, Harvard University, 1991

Research Areas

Transnational Feminism, History and Politics of Feminist Movements, Activisims, Critical Approaches to Development, Feminist Political Economy, South Asia, Middle East, Global South, US, Islam

Contact Information

101 Stephens Hall

eshehabuddin@berkeley.edu

Office Hours: Schedule in-person or Zoom meetings on Calendly 

Publications

Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism (University of California Press, 2021)

Ebru Kongar, Jennifer Olmsted, and Elora Shehabuddin, eds., Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities: Critical Feminist and Postcolonial Analyses (Routledge, 2018)

Reshaping the Holy: Democracy, Development, and Muslim Women in Bangladesh (Columbia University Press, 2008)

Empowering Rural Women: The Impact of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (Grameen Bank, 1992).

“Palestine Solidarity: A View from the Global South,” Feminist Studies 49:2-3 (2023)

“On the Politics of Visibility and Viruses,” in History of the Present special issue “Pandemic Histories” (2023)

“Between Orientalism and Anti-Muslim Racism: Pakistan, the United States, and Women’s Transnational Activism in the Early Cold War Interlude,” meridians 20:2, special issue on “Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Muslim Racism” (2022)

“Collision amid Collusion and Cooperation: Women’s Activism across the Wings of Pakistan,” Economic & Political Weekly LVI:44 (30 October 2021)

Co-editor (with Farida Khan), Journal of Bangladesh Studies (Brill)