Julia Adams, Professor of Sociology at Yale University, teaches and conducts research in the areas of state formation, gender and family, and social theory. She is currently studying contemporary forms of patriarchal politics and the historical sociology of principal-agent relations. She is the author of The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Cornell University Press, 2005) and the co-editor (with Elisabeth S. Clemens and Ann Shola Orloff) of Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology (Duke University Press, 2005).

Lisa Baldez is Associate Professor of Government and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. She received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego. Her book, Why Women Protest: Women's Movements in Chile (Cambridge University Press, 2002), examines the conditions under which women mobilize on the basis of their gender identity. She is the author, with Lee Epstein and Andrew Martin, of “Does the U.S. Constitution Still Need an ERA?” forthcoming in the Journal of Legal Studies. Her current research focuses on candidate nominations and gender quotas in Latin America. Professor Baldez is founding editor, with Karen Beckwith (College of Wooster), of Politics & Gender.

Karen Beckwith, Professor of Political Science at the College of Wooster, received her BA from the University of Kentucky and her MA and PhD from Syracuse University. Teaching primarily in the areas of political parties, political movements, and women, gender, and politics, she has special interests in the United States and West Europe, particularly Britain and Italy. Author of numerous scholarly articles, she is the co-editor of Women's Movements Facing the Reconfigured State (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and author of American Women and Political Participation (Greenwood Press, 1986). Professor Beckwith is founding editor, with Lisa Baldez (Dartmouth College), of Politics & Gender.

Kathleen A. Bratton is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University. She received a PhD in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997. Her research focuses on gender and politics, state politics, and legislative behavior, and has appeared in the Journal of Politics, the American Journal of Political Science, and Social Science Quarterly.

Nancy Burns is Warren E. Miller Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Her current work focuses on gender, race, public opinion, political action, and the relationship between states and cities. Her publications include The Formation of American Local Governments (Oxford, 1994) and The Private Roots of Public Action (Harvard, 2001). Burns served as Principal Investigator of the National Election Studies from 1999–2005. She currently serves as Director of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. Burns is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Barbara Cruikshank, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is the author of The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects (Cornell University Press, 1999). Her current research projects include a genealogy of sanitation reform and a book, titled Neopolitics, on the regulation of sexuality and reform since 1980.

Michaele L. Ferguson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her interests include feminist theory, democratic theory, and philosophy of language. She is currently at work on a book manuscript entitled Sharing Democracy. Together with Lori Marso of Union College, she is also co-editing a collection of essays entitled ‘W’ Stands for Women: Feminists Take on the Bush Administration.

Mary Hawkesworth is Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Her teaching and research interests include feminist theory, women and politics, contemporary political philosophy, philosophy of science, and social policy. Her most recent works include Globalization and Feminist Activism (Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming 2006) and Feminist Inquiry: From Political Conviction to Methodological Innovation (Rutgers University Press, forthcoming 2006). She is also co-author of Women, Democracy and Globalization in North America (Palgrave, forthcoming 2006), and co-editor of Gender, Globalization and Democratization (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).

Mala Htun is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and several articles and book chapters on gender politics, race and politics, and women's rights. Htun's PhD thesis won the prize for best dissertation on women and politics in 2000 from the American Political Science Association, and she has been supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the National Security Education Program. Her current research focuses on the politics of representing women and ethnic and racial minorities in Latin America and worldwide.

Traci M. Levy is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Adelphi University, where she teaches courses primarily in political philosophy and gender studies. Her current research focuses on a feminist public ethic of care, the politics of families, and the construction of social rights.

Ilja A. Luciak, Professor and Chair of Political Science at Virginia Tech, holds a JD from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Iowa. For the past 20 years, he has conducted field research in Latin America, focusing on gender equality and democratization. His latest book, After the Revolution: Gender and Democracy in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2001. He is currently concluding a multi-year study on “Gender Equality and Democratization in Central America and Cuba” for the European Commission.

Meghana V. Nayak is Assistant Professor of Political Science and teaches for the Women's and Gender Studies Department at Pace University-New York City. She received a PhD in Political Science, with a graduate minor in Feminist Studies, from the University of Minnesota in 2003 for her dissertation, “The Politics of Gender Violence: Remaking Indian Democracy.” Her current research interests include the politics of mapping bodies and borders; U.S. foreign policy and racialized and gendered violence; democracy and law; sex trafficking; and media coverage of the Middle East and South Asia.

Ann Shola Orloff is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. Her areas of interest include political sociology, historical and comparative sociology, sociology of gender, and social (including feminist) theory. She is the author of States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States (with Julia O'Connor and Sheila Shaver; Cambridge, 1999) and The Politics of Pensions: A Comparative Analysis of Canada, Great Britain and the United States (Wisconsin, 1993); and co-editor of Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology (with Julia Adams and Elisabeth Clemens; Duke, 2004) and The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (with Margaret Weir and Theda Skocpol; Princeton, 1988).

Barbara Palmer is Assistant Professor and Academic Director in the American University Washington Semester Program. Her previous research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Political Research Quarterly, and Women & Politics. In 2005, she received the American University Alice Paul Award for her teaching, research, and service to the university and community, and the 2001 Miriam Irish Award, with Dennis Simon, for their work on women and congressional elections. Her book with Simon, Breaking the Political Glass Ceiling, will be published in 2006 by Routledge Press. Palmer also serves as the Political Director for Women Under Forty Political Action Committee.

Evelyn M. Simien is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of several articles that have appeared in the Journal of Black Studies, Political Science Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, and Women & Politics. Her forthcoming book, Black Feminist Voices in Politics, will soon be published by the State University of New York Press.

Dennis M. Simon is Associate Professor of Political Science and an Altschuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at Southern Methodist University. His previous research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Women & Politics. He is the recipient of the Southern Political Science Association's Pi Sigma Alpha Award for his study of national forces in state legislative elections, and the 2001 Miriam Irish Award, with Barbara Palmer, for their work on women and congressional elections. His book with Palmer, Breaking the Political Glass Ceiling, will be published in 2006 by Routledge Press.

Aili Mari Tripp is Associate Dean of International Studies, Director of the Women's Studies Research Center, and Professor of Political Science and Women's Studies. She is author of Women and Politics in Uganda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000) and Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania (University of California Press, 1997). She has also published on women and politics in Africa, women's responses to economic reform, and transformations of associational life in Africa. Tripp serves on the boards of the African Studies Association, the National Council for Research on Women, and the Council of the American Political Science Association.

Christina Wolbrecht is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program in American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of The Politics of Women's Rights: Parties, Positions, and Change (Princeton University Press, 2000), which received the 2001 Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the Political Organizations and Parties Section of the APSA, and the co-editor (with Rodney E. Hero) of The Politics of Democratic Inclusion (Temple University Press, 2005). She is currently engaged in collaborative projects using new ecological inference techniques to investigate women's voting behavior after suffrage, and examining the impact of female role models on the political intentions of adolescents.