M. Bahati Kuumba, Ph.D.

M. Bahati Kuumba, Ph.D., is the Associate Professor of Women’s Studies/Associate Director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College and 2005 recipient of the Fannie Lou Hamer Award.

Her scholarly research, activism, and public presentations focus on African women transnationally in the areas of social resistance movements, population policy, and global African/Black feminist theory and praxis. She has also done work in the areas of participatory research methodologies and popular education for movement-building. Her research and activism have led to collaborations with women and women’s organizations in the United States, Canada, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

Dr. Kuumba is a prolific scholar who has published widely in scholarly journals and activist publications such as Sociological Forum; Race, Gender, and Class; Africa Today; Mobilization: International Journal of Social and Political Movements; 21st Century Afro Review, Feminist Issues; and Agenda – Empowered Women for Gender Equity (a South African feminist journal).

She has also authored several book chapters on women and gender in cross-cultural and race/class/gender perspective including “Engendering the Pan-African Movement: Field Notes from the All-African Women’s Revolutionary Union,” in Still Lifting, Still Climbing: African American Women’s Contemporary Activism (edited by Kimberly Springer, New York University Press, 1999).

Her book, "Gender and Social Movements," focuses comparatively on women in the U.S. Civil Rights/ Black Power and South African anti-Apartheid movements (AltaMira Press, 2001). She has co-edited an interdisciplinary anthology: Transnational Transgressions: African Women and Transformational Struggle in Global Perspectives, which is forthcoming with Africa World Press.

Guest Lecturer at Women’s University in Africa

During her lecture, Dr. Kuumba addressed “Sisters in Struggle: Mapping African Women’s Transnational Activism.”The  presentation will explore the his/herstorical expressions of African and African diasporan women’s transnational activism.  

Kuumba also challenged the contemporary scholarship on global women’s activism which virtually ignores the cross-border resistances of African and African diasporan women to intersecting oppressions.  As opposed to being subjects of external influences, there is actually a rich and radical legacy of African women’s counter-hegemonic resistance across borders and nation-state boundaries.