Patrons

Alison Phipps is Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University in the UK. She was previously Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Sussex, and was Director of Gender Studies there between 2005 and 2017. This involved leading undergraduate MA and PhD programmes as well as a research centre, and managing relationships with a number of external partners. Alison was also Chair of the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (now Feminist Studies Association) of UK and Ireland between 2009 and 2012 – this is a multi-national association promoting feminist research and teaching, and gender and women’s studies nationally and internationally. Alison’s own research focuses on mainstream Western feminist movements, especially those which aim to tackle sexual violence. Her recent book Me, Not You explored the role of whiteness and class privilege in the #MeToo movement, and how this not only excludes more marginalised women but also treats them as disposable.

Egle is the Deputy Director of the Gender Research Centre and a Senior Lecturer in the Politics and International Development at the School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies (SPAIS} in the University of Bristol, UK

Her broad interest is in the way that gender functions to include or exclude individuals from opportunities related to their everyday lives. More particularly, she explores the ways chat global economic and political structures are gendered and limits individuals’ agency.

For the past decade she has have been working with sex workers in Kenya to explore the political economy of Kenya and the limits of women’s agency within it. Her work with women selling sex in Mombasa, Kenya and investigation of their work and livelihood strategies resulted in her first manuscript SellingSexinKenya:GenderedAgencyunderNeoliberalism(CUP, 2019). Her lacer work moved to explore sex worker activism and politics in eastern Africa.

Dr. Okech is an Associate Professor of Political Sociology at SOAS, University of London where she teaches in the Department of Politics and International Studies. She also serves as Associate Director Equity and Accountability providing leadership on the university’s racial justice work. Dr Okech received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Nairobi, Kenya (2002) and her MA (2007) and PhD (2012) in Critical Gender Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Dr Okech is a feminist scholar activist whose teaching and research interests lie in the nexus between gender, sexuality, security, and nation-state making projects as they occur in conflict and post-conflict societies. Her work is grounded in African feminist, queer, and Black internationalist thought as central frameworks for thinking about power and justice. Across her work is an exploration of racial justice and Black solidarity that focusses on the majority world and Africa to reimagine Pan African and Internationalist strategies for anti-racist, feminist, and queer liberation. Methodologically, Dr. Okech is invested in challenging hierarchies in knowledge production processes through an emphasis on decolonial approaches to research, teaching and more expansive understandings of knowledge production and transfer processes. Dr Okech continues to work with and support a range of international and African feminist movement support and multilateral organisations on projects that sit at the intersection of gender and security as well as broader organisational development concerns. Dr Okech is a member of the Human Sciences Research Council editorial board, the Board of Trustees of SOAS University of London, co-chair of the Just Associates Board and adjunct faculty with the African Leadership Centre at King’s College, London.