Prof. Sarah Bradshaw
Middlesex University London
United Kingdom
Prof. Bradshaw is a Professor of Gender and Sustainable Development at Middlesex University London. She teaches in the general field of gender and development, with a specific focus on development policy. She is currently Chair of the School of Law Ethics Committee and Co-Chair of the University’s Gender Forum.
She has published widely on gendered rights and on issues related to poverty and poverty alleviation and women’s groups and movement. While living and working in Nicaragua in the late 1990s the experience of Hurricane Mitch led to an interest in ‘disasters’ and in 2013 she published the first book to consider the nexus of Gender, Development and Disasters. Her recent work has considered patterns of ‘feminisation’ and her publications have critiqued current understandings of feminized poverty.
Her time spent in Nicaragua – during a career break from the University – led to her working closely with actors of the women’s movements in Central America and in particular with the Nicaraguan feminist NGO, Puntos de Encuentro. Her work with Puntos involved designing training workshops, working on advocacy campaigns and undertaking research around women’s rights. It took her into new and emerging fields such as social communication initiatives for social change, including working on their popular TV ‘social soap’ – Sexto Sentido.
She combines research with practice, having lobbied around World Bank policies, advocated for the inclusion of gendered rights in UN processes, and engaged in inter-governmental negotiations around international policy frameworks.
Prof. Bradshaw works with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a global initiative of the United Nations that aimed to help shape the post-2015 development agenda. As part of this process to establish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) she was commissioned to write the background report for the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons . She also co-designed and delivered a Massive Open On-line Course (MOOC) –Human Rights, Human Wrongs – as part of the SDG Academy initiative.