Kelly Pemberton is Associate Professor of Religion and Women’s Studies at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., advisor to the M.A. Program in Hinduism and Islam in the department of religion, and as of July 2019, director of undergraduate studies in the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program. She received an M.A. in international studies and comparative religion from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a Ph.D. in religion from Columbia University, where she also received major fellowships for dissertation research from the Fulbright Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Her research focuses on South Asia and the Middle East in four key areas: Sufi mysticism, questions of religious and spiritual authority, civil society, and Islamic activism, especially as these relate to gender. Her current research project is a global comparative study of Islam and gender activism. She teaches courses on gender in Islam and in Western Religion, Islamic Historiography, Islam and Hinduism, and Islamic Gender Activism. To date, she has published one monograph, Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India (2010), a volume of essays, co-edited with Michael Nijhawan of the U of Toronto, titled Shared Idioms Sacred Symbols and the Articulation of Identities in South Asia (2009), and several articles and book chapters in edited volumes and scholarly journals. Aside from teaching, she also serves as an expert witness for asylum cases in the US and UK.