Dr Shirley Ardener

Shirley Ardener

Research Affiliate

  • B.Sc(Econ) London; MA Status (Oxford). Founding Director, now Research Associate, of  CCCRW, now the International Gender Studies Centre  (IGS) at Lady Margret Hall, Oxford.
  • Senior Associate, Queen Elizabeth House. 
  • Honorary member of St John’s College Senior Common Room.
  • Research Affiliate, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology.
  • Co-editor IGS series with Berg, and of Social Identities series and Cameroon Studies series with Berghahn Books.
  • Honorary Life Member Ass. of Social Anthropologists of UK and the Commonwealth

Distinctions: Welcome Medal for Anthropology, OBE

Research interests: Social Anthropology

Current research: Cameroon Studies, Microcredit, Gender, Ethnicity and Identity

Geographical area: Nigeria, Cameroon, UK.

Selected publications:

  • Perceiving Women (editor and contributor), Berg Publications, 1975
  • Defining Females (editor and contributor), Berg, 1978
  • Women and Space; ground rules and social maps (editor and contributor), Berg, 1981
  • The Incorporated Wife (co-ed and contributor) Berg, 1984              
  • Visibility and Power, Essays on Women in Society and Development (co-editor, and contributor) OUP India, 1986
  • Persons and Powers of Women (ed. and  contributor), Berg, 1992
  • Women and Missions, co-editor, Berg, 1993
  • Bilingual Women, co-editor, Berg, 1994
  • Money-Go-Rounds; women’s use of rotating savings and credit associations (co-ed.  and contributor), 1995
  • Kingdom on Mount Cameroon (annotated edition of papers by E. Ardener) Berghahn Books, 1996
  • Swedish Ventures in Cameroon; trade and travel; people and politics, 1883-1923, annotated edition of Knutson’s memoirs. Berghahn Books, 2002
  • Changing Sex and Bending Gender (co-editor, and  contributor) Berghahn Books, 2005
  • Professional Identities; Policy and Practice in Business and Bureaucracy (co-editor) Berghahn Books, 2007
  • War and Women Across Continents… (co-editor and contributor), Berghahn Books 2016

Full bibliography, including articles on Cameroon etc., can be found in festschrift edited by Bryceson, Okely and Webber, Identity and Networks (Berghahn Books).  This book, and another festschrift - Encounter, Transformation and Identity: Peoples of the Western Cameroon Borderlands, Fanso & Fowler, eds., also Berghahn Books – include evaluations of Ardener’s work.

International Gender Studies website