Norani Othman is one of Sisters in Islam’s seven founding members. She was also founding Research Fellow of IKMAS (Institute of Malaysian & International Studies), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, and until January 2011, its Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Sociology, specialising in issues related to Islamic societies, human rights, rights & empowerment of women, democratisation, and globalisation.Rozana Isa has been in the women’s rights movement for two decades. A graduate in accounting, she began her activism with the Women’s Aid Organisation in 1999. Over the years, she was exposed to the challenges faced by women to have their rights recognised and exercised in the context of increasing politicisation of race and religion within a democratic nation with parallel legal systems. She believes that knowledge, engagement, and community building are part of the key ingredients to address ethno-religious extremisms and to raise consciousness on gender equality. She currently serves as Executive Director for Sisters in Islam, an NGO working on women’s rights within the framework of Islam.Yaso Nadarajah is an Associate Professor in the School of Global, Urban & Social Studies at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia; Researcher, Educator, and Development Sociologist with a special interest in the areas of human ingenuity, community engagement, and international development. As Key A key researcher Researcher in RMIT’s Centre forRMIT Social Equity Research Centre Global Research, her primaryone of her major projects was undertaking was the Local-Global Community Sustainability project, a study of communities across a range of sites in Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, East Timor, and Papua New Guinea. This study has generated a wide range of research reports and academic publications, with a visible influence on public and community development policy. She is continuing her research in Papua New Guinea, India, Malaysia, and Australia, where she is working on a body of work around social change, cultural transformation, and ‘building from the ground up’.
