March 8th 2026 marks a decade since staff in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh posted the first entry to the Dangerous Women Project web site on International Women’s Day 2016. In the year that followed, over 350 provocation pieces were added to the site in a bid to answer the question What does it mean to be a ‘dangerous woman’?

Amongst these contributions was my own on environmental scientist and Scottish aid worker Dr Linda Norgrove, who was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan on 26th September 2010 and died just a few days later in a failed rescue attempt on 8th October 2010. I also helped Dr Frances Ryan – one of my PhD students at the time, now a lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University – write for the project on dangerous young widows.

Since its official end in March 2017, the Dangerous Women Project has enjoyed a busy afterlife, for example in the publication of three books: (1) The art of being dangerous: exploring women and danger through creative expression, (2) Dangerous women: fifty reflections on women, power and identity and Women who dared: from the infamous to the forgotten. The project’s enduring relevance is also evident in its use as a teaching resource.

Given my on-going interest in the project, I was delighted to attend a lunchtime seminar entitled A decade of dangerous women at IASH last Friday 6th March 2026. Here, following an enthusiastic introduction by Professor Jo Shaw, a new cohort of researchers delivered seven minute presentations on dangerous women from the past and present. The speakers and their topics were:

• Dr Elsie C. Albis on (predominantly female) Filipino shamans known as balinana or babaylan. Regarded by their communities as healers, leaders, keepers of memory, visionaries, and priestesses, they terrified Spanish colonialists.
• Dr Kate Ash-Irisarri on Isabel, Countess of Buchan (C14th-C15th), whose role in the Wars of Scottish Independence has often been recast as a medieval sex scandal centred on a lustful woman, or otherwise ignored/eradicated in the record.
• Dr Anna Girling on Nancy Cunard (1896-1965), whose work as a writer and political activist was often overshadowed by interest in her aristocratic background, social life, flamboyant fashionable sense, and string of sexual partners.
• Dr Helen Shutt on Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900-1978), a Nigerian educator and political activist who campaigned successfully for women’s rights, leaving an important legacy that continues to wield a strong influence on women’s rights movements today.
• Dr Georgi Gill on Anna Burns (1962-), a Northern Irish novelist and 2018 Man Booker prize winner whose work considers politics, society and gender in explorations of what it meant to be a woman during the ‘Troubles’.
• Dr Jéssica Hipolito on Marielle Franco (1979-2018), a Black, LGBT Brazilian sociologist, human rights activist, and politician, who campaigned against police violence, racism, and gender inequality. Following her assassination in 2018, she is a global symbol of resistance to authoritarianism and state violence.
• Dr Sheelalipi Sahana on Gulfisha Fatima (1993-), a student activist imprisoned for five years for an alleged role in protests against the India’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act, her ‘political dissent’ costing her the five years of her life that she had dreamt of dedicating to doctoral studies.

All the presenters spoke with passion. Georgi, a self-confessed Anna Burns fan-girl, for example, enthusiastically encouraged audience members to read her subject’s work. They also brought humour into their short talks. In Kate’s case, this was through the use of an LNER poster (below). There was also an element of performance in the presentations, for example when Sheelalipi read out some of Gulfisha Fatima’s poetry.

Despite the constraints of the seven minute slots, all the speakers made a strong case for those profiled to be considered ‘dangerous women’. Thanks are due to all who presented, and to the team that organised this celebration of International Women’s Day 2026, highlighting the long-term legacy of the Dangerous Women Project.

On the order of Edward I of England, Isabel Countess of Buchan was imprisoned in a cage for four years in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Poster artist: Doris Clare Zinkeisen (1898-1991). Source: the Science Museum Collection. Image released under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Licence