The Institute proudly presents a short collection of essays marking the tenth anniversary of the Dangerous Women Project. This project curated over 365 responses to the question what does it mean to be a dangerous woman from all over the world between International Women’s Day 2016 and International Women’s Day 2017. Three books have been published since then, collecting essays on various themes, from biography to politics to visual art. The Art of Being Dangerous: Exploring Women and Danger through Creative Expression (Leuven University Press, 2021) gathered together a range of pieces of visual art, poetry and creative writing, while Dangerous Women: Fifty Reflections on Women, Power and Identity (Unbound, 2022) dealt with politics, law and sociology. Women Who Dared: From the Infamous to the Forgotten (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) provided a global view of feminist history, taking in every continent in a span stretching from antiquity to the 21st century.
Now, activists, political prisoners and even a priestess come together in this new collection celebrating a decade since the beginning of the Dangerous Women Project, exploring further what it means for women to be daring. From a controversial countess with a centuries-long legacy, to a writer narrating women’s predatory experiences during the Troubles, this text celebrates the work of five women selected by current researchers at IASH. Originally shared at an event for International Women's Day 2026, their stories demonstrate no singular definition of a dangerous woman, but that “there are still many things that can be pursued to uncover who she is.”
Lioness, Captive, Visionary is available as a free eBook here (opens as PDF, 51 pages).
Contents:
Dr Helen Shutt’s essay on activist and educator Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti places her political action in the wider context of British imperialism. The ‘Lioness of Lisabi’, as she was known, used music, public spectacle, petitions, nudity and even picnics as potent weapons in the fight for justice.
Dr Kate Ash-Irisarri travels back centuries to the life of Isabel Macduff, Countess of Buchan. Her imprisonment ‘in a wooden hut, in one of the towers of Berwick castle’ placed her on public display as punishment for daring to crown a controversial King of Scotland; yet her legacy as a ‘wicked conspirator’ and ‘sensual countess’ in chronicles, romantic novels, and even railway advertisements demonstrates the long shadow of a woman willing to transgress.
Dr Sheelalipi Sahana places her focus on human rights defender Gulfisha Fatima, imprisoned like Isabel, but now for the crime of conspiracy to instigate riots. Sahana uses Fatima’s poems to explore her role as a political prisoner in Modi’s India, seeking freedom not just for herself but for minorities fighting for equal treatment as citizens.
Dr Elsie Albis notes that the struggle for recognition of our common humanity is constant – her essay on the baliana shows that this pre-colonial figure from the Philippines can be at once a healer, a subverter of gender norms, a leader, a she-devil, a teacher, a warrior and a priestess.
Dr Georgi Gill’s chapter on Anna Burns, Booker Prize-winning author of Milkman, closes the book. Burns’ own life (as ‘the only Booker winner to thank a housing charity, a foodbank and the Department of Work and Pensions in the winning novel’s acknowledgements’) models a persistence that could be said to drive all five dangerous women featured in this volume.