Shireen Hassim is Canada 150 Research Chair in Gender and African Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, and Visiting Professor, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER), Wits University. She has written and edited several books, including No Shortcuts to Power: Women and Policymaking in Africa, and Go Home or Die Here: Violence, Xenophobia and the Politics of Difference in South Africa. Women’s Organisations and Democracy: Contesting Authority won the Victoria Shuck Award for Best Book in Women and Politics from the American Political Science Association. Her interests lie in feminist theory and politics, collective action and histories of mobilisation of women, and social policies and gender. Her most recent book was an archival recuperation of the work of the South African sociologist, Fatima Meer.