Dr Ayesha Imam

Ayesha Imam has lectured and carried out research at universities and research institutes in Nigeria, the U.K., Canada and Senegal and worked with IDEP (United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, Senegal) to strengthen gender analysis in economic development planning. She was the founding director BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights in Nigeria which won awards for the defence of women’s rights in Muslim Laws. She has also been the Head of the Culture, Gender and Human Rights Department of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). 

She was active with the Council for the Development of Economic and Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the international solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), the International Council for Human Rights Policy (ICHRP), Africa Action and the African Centre for Democratic Governance. She also chaired the board of Greenpeace International for seven years, as well as coordinated several global research or capacity-building programmes. She has worked with and for a range of organizations including women’s rights, official aid and UN agencies. 

Her work is published widely for activist, policy, and academic uses, and includes books, journal articles, policy briefs and activist manuals. Publications include: The Devil is in the Details: At the Nexus of Development Women’s Rights and Religious Fundamentalisms (AWID 2016), Women In Search of Citizenship: Experiences from West Africa (2013 in French and English), Engendering African Social Sciences (1999, English reprint and in French 2004), plus journal articles, policy briefs and activist manuals. Capacity-building and strategy-sharing includes collaborating in Strategies of Resistance: Challenging the Cultural Disempowerment of Women (2011) and Ba Sa Jin Mu – They Don’t Listen to Us: Women and Informal Peace Building in North-Eastern Nigeria (2022).