Valentine M. Moghadam is Professor of Sociology and Director of the International Affairs Program at Northeastern University, Boston, which she joined in January 2012. Previously she has been a professor of sociology and director of women’s studies at Purdue University and Illinois State University; a section chief at UNESCO in Paris, leading policy-oriented research on gender equality and development in the Social and Human Sciences Sector; and a senior researcher at the United Nations University’s WIDER Institute in Helsinki, Finland, where she coordinated the research program on women and development. Born in Tehran, Iran, Professor Moghadam received her higher education in Canada and the U.S. Her current areas of research include globalization, transnational social movements and networks, economic citizenship, and gender and development in the Middle East and North Africa.

Among her many publications, Professor Moghadam is author of Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East; Women, Work and Economic Reform in the Middle East and North Africa; Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks , which won the American Political Science Association’s Victoria Schuck award for best book on women and politics for 2005; and Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement. She has edited seven books, most recently Making Globalization Work for Women: The Role of Social Rights and Trade Union Leadership (2011).