What does it mean for the Sun to call Shami Chakrabarti ‘the most dangerous woman in Britain’ or the Daily Mail to label Nicola Sturgeon ‘the most dangerous wee woman in the world’?
What, really, does it mean to be a dangerous woman?
This powerful anthology presents fifty answers to that question, reaching past media hyperbole to explore serious considerations about the conflicts and power dynamics with which women live today.
In Dangerous Women, writers, artists, politicians, journalists, performers and opinion-formers from a variety of backgrounds – including Irenosen Okojie, Jo Clifford, Bidisha, Nada Awar Jarrar, Nicola Sturgeon and many more – reflect on the long-standing idea that women, individually or collectively, constitute a threat.
In doing so, they celebrate and give agency to the women who have been dismissed or trivialised for their power, talent and success – the women who have been condemned for challenging the status quo. They reclaim the right to be dangerous.
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Jo Shaw
Ben Fletcher-Watson
Abrisham Ahmadzadeh
Jo is a European Union legal scholar, and has held the Salvesen Chair of European Institutions in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh since 2005. From 2014-2017 she was Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, where she founded the Dangerous Women Project with Peta Freestone. Her current research examines citizenship regimes: what they are and how they work. She is also co-Director of the Global Citizenship Observatory.
Ben manages the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. He was born in Germany, trained as a theatre director and dramaturg in the USA, and holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews. His interests include accessible and inclusive performance, theatre for babies and contemporary European drama. He lives in Edinburgh.
Abrisham is studying at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in the sexual agency of goddesses in antiquity. Her dangerous female idol has to be Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and without the wise words of Audre Lorde or the dulcet tones of Aretha Franklin she wouldn’t get through the day.
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A big day for Dangerous Women - the final manuscript is being sent off to the printers! We've been scrutinising every comma, spell-checking and tweaking the cover design for several months, and the book is looking incredible. We can't wait to share it all with you next year, along with all the lovely rewards, from mugs to notebooks, calendars to personalised portraits.
We'll be announcing the launch…
14th August 2020100% funded
We are thrilled to announce that Dangerous Women has achieved its target and is now fully funded. We have been blown away by the response to our campaign - we can't wait to share the finished book with everyone.
Our sincerest thanks go to Unbound, who have helped us every step of the way; to our wonderful authors, whose work continues to inspire us; to the original Dangerous Women Project team…
29th July 2020The latest news on "Dangerous Women": awards, Google Doodles and more
It's been a busy summer so far for the Dangerous Women Project. The book currently has 405 pledges, and has reached 77% of our target funding. The match funding we secured last month to take us to 100% will arrive in the next few days, and then it's full steam ahead to printing the book!
We've also been enjoying some lovely news about our authors in recent weeks: on Monday, Irenosen Okojie was…
23rd March 2020"The chariot wheels of progress": of medics and milestones
In these remarkable and uncertain times, we are so thrilled to see that Dangerous Women has just jumped to 66% funded. What a milestone! Thanks to everyone who has pledged so far, and welcome to our community!
Like all of us, the Dangerous Women team are full of admiration for the tireless workers in the NHS, and indeed in hospitals around the world, as they strive to overcome the coronavirus.…
26th February 202050% funded!
Today we reached 50% funding! Thank you so much to you all for getting us here. Your support and dedication to the book makes it such a joy to work on. Over here at Dangerous Women HQ we are beaming with joy at the idea that other people want to read this book as much as we do. As promised, we are going to spill some more beans on the manuscript. We have chosen 50 of our favourite pieces, aiming to…
2nd December 20192019 Twitter Advent Calendar
You can find out more about all of our wonderful authors in our Twitter Advent Calendar, where we'll be celebrating two contributors to the book each day until Christmas. The first authors were Nicola Sturgeon MSP and Professor Liz Campbell. Nicola is First Minister of Scotland, leader of the Scottish National Party, and Member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow Southside since 2007. Liz is Chair…
18th November 2019Author Spotlight: Pegi Eyers
This week, we chatted with Pegi Eyers, a Dangerous Women author who is a devotee of nature-based culture and all that is sacred to the Earth. She lives in the countryside near Nogojiwanong in Mississauga Anishnaabe territory (Peterborough, Ontario, Canada) on a hilltop with views reaching for miles in all directions. Her piece targets the passive white woman in the struggle for intersectional…
31st October 2019Author Spotlight: Sujana Upadhyay
This week we hear from Sujana Upadhyay, whose Dangerous Women piece is called “A deep shade of red”. A bilingual poet, playwright and researcher, Sujana’s work mainly explores human relationships, traditional practices and our interconnectedness with nature, often drawing inspiration from her childhood in Nepal, interest in folklore and work in gender relations.
- What is your writing process…
24th October 2019New podcast: "Sharing Things"
Episode 5 of Sharing things is out today! This week’s podcast guests are Srishti Chaudhary and Abrisham Ahmadzadeh. Srishti studied creative writing at the University of Edinburgh, and her first novel, Once Upon A Curfew, was released in April 2019. Abrisham is a fourth-year classics student who’s working on the launch of Dangerous Women, a book consisting of 50 pieces all answering the question,…
11th October 2019Author Spotlight: Glynis Ridley
Today in our author spotlights, we hear from Glynis Ridley, an academic who focusses on the 18th century. Glynis is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. Her current book project stems from a flea-market purchase of a notebook kept from 1824-27 by Thomasina Gleadowe-Newcomen of Dublin, Ireland, and will become a biography of Thomasina, her family…
20th September 2019Author Spotlight: Meltem Naz Kaso Corral Sánchez
To bring some insight into Dangerous Women behind the scenes, some of our authors have answered questions about their writing process, their involvement with the Dangerous Women Project and their favourite women from history. In bringing the project into 2019, the authors have worked tirelessly to do themselves and the dangerous women they are representing proud, in amending and updating their…
5th September 201925% funded!
We are officially 25% funded! We can’t thank you enough for your support and dedication - in pledging for our book, you have got us one step closer to telling the stories of women unheard. We couldn’t have got here without you! And in doing so, we are placing many more people on the map with your names in the back of the book.
If you haven’t yet pledged, now is the time! Please help us get to 50…
