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Department of Political Science

Brooke A. Ackerly

Professor of Political Science
Professor of Human and Organizational Development (by courtesy)
Professor of Law (by courtesy)
Professor of Philosophy (by courtesy)              
Affiliated Faculty, Women’s and Gender Studies Program

Professor Ackerly is Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2018-2021). In her research, teaching, and collaborations, she works to clarify without simplifying the most pressing problems of global justice, including human rights and climate change. Using feminist methodologies, she integrates into her theoretical work empirical research on activism and the experiences of those affected by injustice (Grounded Normative Theory). See Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism (Cambridge 2000), Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference (Cambridge 2008), Doing Feminist Research with Jacqui True (Palgrave Macmillan 2010, 2019), and Just Responsibility: A Human Rights Theory of Global Justice (Oxford University Press 2018). She is currently working on a book on Climate Change Justice and Governance based on a decade of fieldwork in Bangladesh and a handbook and network for scholars engaged in grounded and engaged normative theory, https://engagedtheory.net.

She is currently working on the intersection of global economic, environmental, and gender justice in their material and epistemic dimensions. She teaches courses on justice, ethics and public policy, feminist theory, feminist research methods, human rights, contemporary political thought, and gender and the history of political thought. She is the winner of the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science Graduate Teaching Award and the Margaret Cuninggim Mentoring Prize. She is the founder of the Global Feminisms Collaborative, a group of scholars and activists developing ways to collaborate on applied research for social justice. She advises academics and donors on evaluation, methodology, and the ethics of research. She serves the profession through

committees in her professional associations including the American Political Science Association (APSA), International Studies Association (ISA), and the European Consortium on Politics and Gender (ECPG). She currently serves on the APSA Committee for the Status of Women in the Profession. She has been a member of the editorial board for Politics and Gender (Journal of the APSA, Women and Politics Section) and is currently a member of the editorial boards of the Political Research Quarterly, Journal of Politics, and Politics, Gender and Identities.

Representative publications

  • “Unearthing Grounded Normative Theory: Practices and Commitments of Empirical Research in Political Theory.” With Luis Cabrera, Fonna Forman, Genevieve Fuji Johnson, Chris Tenove, Antje Wiener. Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2021.1894020, 2021
  • “Celebrate Early and Often.” With Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Krishna Menon, Marysia Zalewski. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 23:5, 671-673, DOI: 10.1080/14616742.2021.1994754, 2021
  • “Feminist Editing in an Unfeminist World.” With Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Krishna Menon, Marysia Zalewski. International Feminist Journal of Politics 23, 2: 189-191. DOI: 10.1080/14616742.2021.1905971, 2021
  • “Responsibility for climate justice: a human rights approach to global responsibility for environmental change and impact,” in Human Rights and Justice: Philosophical, Economic, and Social Perspectives, eds. Melissa Labonte and Kurt Mills. New York, NY: Routledge, chapter 5, 2018
  • “Human rights, Climate change, and Climate justice,” in Discourse on Rights in India: Debates and Dilemmas, eds. Bijayalaxmi Nanda and Nupur Ray, Routledge 2018
  • “Climate and community: The human rights, livelihood and migration impacts of climate change,” with Mujibul Anam, Jonathan Gilligan, and Steven Goodbred in Climate Change Migration and Human Rights, eds. Andrew Baldwin, Dug Cubie, Anja Mihr and Teresa Thorp. New York, NY: Routledge, 189-202, 2017
  • View Curriculum Vitae