Kathleen Sheldon is an independent historian who is a Research Affiliate with the UCLA Center for the Study of Women.

Her books include Pounders of Grain: Women, Work, and Politics in Mozambique, Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (2nd ed., 2016), the edited collection, Courtyards, Markets, City Streets: Urban Women in Africa, and the forthcoming African Women Making History: Early History to the Twenty-First Century (2017).

Sheldon’s recent articles about Mozambican history and African women’s history have been published in Canadian Journal of African Studies, History in Africa, African and Asian Studies, and African Studies Review, and in collections including Writing African History, African Novels in the Classroom, and Contesting Archives: Finding Women in the Sources. She has published over forty book reviews in a wide range of journals.

She has served on editorial boards and contributed to several reference works, including New Encyclopedia of Africa, Dictionary of African Biography, and Oxford Bibliographies in African Studies. She co-edited two special journal issues on women and gender, Lusotopie (2005) and African Studies Review (in two parts, 2015 and 2016). She also edits H-Luso-Africa, an online network on Portuguese-speaking Africa.

She was elected to the African Studies Association Board of Directors (2004-2007), is currently the ASA treasurer (beginning in 2013), and has also served the ASA Women’s Caucus and the Lusophone African Studies Organization in leadership positions.