Walsh

Denise Walsh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics whose research investigates how liberal democracies can become more inclusive and just. ​Her current book project, Imperial Sexism: Why Culture and Women’s Rights Don’t Clash, compares policy debates about the face veil ban in France, polygyny in South Africa, and Indigenous women’s Indian status in Canada. She argues that a clash between culture and women's rights is never inescapable, discusses what fuels this widely held perception, and explains how justice can be advanced for minoritized women and their communities. 

Walsh also has an ongoing project on actions that can impede political participation, including a co-edited special symposium on "Backlash and the Future of Feminism" (Signs, January 2020). Her first book, Women’s Rights in Democratizing States (Cambridge University Press, 2010), compares South Africa, Poland, and Chile to argue that when debate is more open and inclusive in institutions such as unions and political parties, women’s rights advance. 

Walsh’s research has been funded by the Institute for Advanced Studies at Notre Dame, the National Science Foundation, USAID, the Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Italy, the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, and many organizations at the University of Virginia. She is a former editor of the American Political Science Review and has been active in diversifying the profession. Walsh is a recipient an all-University Teaching Award and teaches undergraduate courses on power, violence, and inequality in the global South; identity politics; gender politics in comparative perspective; and feminist theory. She also teaches graduate courses on identity politics and the state and feminist and queer theory.