Premilla Nadasen
Professor of History, Barnard Collge
Premilla Nadasen is professor of history at Barnard College, a 2018-2019 Fulbright Scholar, and president of the National Women’s Studies Association. She has published extensively on the multiple meanings of feminism, alternative labor movements, and grassroots community organizing and is most interested in visions of social change, and the ways in which poor and working-class women of color have fought for social justice. She is the author of two award-winning books Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States (Routledge 2005) and Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement (Beacon 2015) and is currently writing a biography of South African singer and anti-apartheid activist Miriam Makeba. Nadasen has been engaged with community and campus activism for many years, bridging academic and activist work by making her scholarly work accessible to people outside of the university. She has worked with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Damayan Migrant Workers Association, Scholars for Social Justice, and the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. She writes for both academic and non-academic outlets and speaks widely on issues of social justice, feminism, public policy and anti-racist organizing.
Working Group Affiliations
Social Justice After the Welfare State, Project Director
Transnational Black Feminisms, Project Director