This evening, on International Women’s Day 2022, I will be attending the online book launch of Dangerous women. Edited by Jo Shaw, Ben Fletcher-Watson and Abrisham Ahmadzadeh, the book comprises fifty essays on social and political structures, everyday life, attitudes, and identity to question what it means for a woman to be considered ‘dangerous’, as well the danger that a woman may present to others. I am looking forward to listening to the speakers at the launch. They include Mab Jones, Sujana Crawford, Laura Waddell, Glynis Ridley, and Rachel McCrum.

The perspectives in the book are drawn from a larger body of contributions to the Dangerous Women Project, which ran between International Women’s Day 2016 (I blogged a review of the launch event) and 2017.

Amongst the body of contributions in 2016-17 were two pieces written by members of the Centre for Social Informatics. The first was my profile of Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove. This was uploaded to the Dangerous Women Project web site on 8th October 2016, the sixth anniversary of Norgrove’s death – see also my blog post on the same date. The second was a submission about the status of young widows in the western world composed by my colleague Frances Ryan who, at the time, was a PhD student in our research group. There is more about the drafting of Frances’ submission in an earlier post to this blog.