Shirin M. Rai FBA (born 1 December 1960),[1] is an interdisciplinary scholar who works across the political science and international relations boundaries.
She is known for her research on the intersections between international political economy, globalisation, post-colonial governance, institutions and processes of democratisation and gender regimes.
In July 2022, she was confirmed as the distinguished research professorship in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Rai joined the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick as the first woman to be appointed as a full-time lecturer, in 1989 and served there until 2022.
Shirin M. Rai is an interdisciplinary scholar and has written extensively on issues of gender, governance and development, and politics and performance.
This emerged out of Rai’s Leverhulme Trust programme on Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament (2007–2011), of which she was director.