Gouws is Professor of Political Science and holds a PhD from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in the USA. Her fields of specialisation are South African Politics and Gender Politics and Political Behavior. Her co-authored book with James Gibson from Washington University St Louis, Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa: Experiments in Democratic Persuasion (Cambridge University Press, 2003) was awarded the Alexander George Book Award for best book in Political Psychology in 2003. In 2004 she received the Rector’s Award for Excellence in Research. She has published widely on issues in South African Politics. Presently her research focuses on women and citizenship, the National Gender Machinery and representation. She is the editor of (Un)Thinking Citizenship: Feminist Debates in Contemporary South Africa. (UK: Ashgate and Cape Town: Juta, 2005). This book was selected as "Book of the Month" in February 2007 by Constitution Hill, the seat of the Constitutional Court. In 2007 she was the Edith Keeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor at Northwestern University, USA. In April 2011 she was a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation Centre in Bellagio, Italy, where she is working on a book on women's politics and the women’s movement in South Africa since 1994. She is a Board Member of the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town.

E-mail: ag1@sun.ac.za

For information about the Department in which Gouws is based, click here.