Premilla Nadasen

Premilla Nadasen has published extensively on the multiple meanings of feminism, alternative labor movements, and grass-roots community organizing and is most interested in visions of social change, and the ways in which poor and working-class women of color fought for social justice. Her most recent book, Household Workers Unite, examines how African American domestic workers in the U.S. strategically used storytelling to develop a political identity and through their organizing reshaped the landscape of labor organizing. She is currently writing a biography of South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba.

Nadasen is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and serves on the scholarly advisory committee of the New York Historical Society's Center for Women's History. She is past president of the National Women’s Studies Association and was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Oxford University in 2019. She is the 2020 inaugural recipient of the Ann Snitow Prize for outstanding feminist activist and intellectual work.

Professor Nadasen has bridged academic and activist work by making her scholarship accessible to people outside the university. She has been a museum consultant, has written op-eds for newspapers and on-line outlets, and served as expert witness before the New York State Assembly Committee on Labor as well as the federal Department of Labor.  She collaborated with the Institute for Policy Studies and the National Domestic Workers Alliance on the “We Dream in Black Project” to mobilize Black domestic workers in the South.