Aili Mari Tripp is Professor of Political Science and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her teaching and research interests are in African politics, comparative politics, women and politics and gender studies in an international context. She is author of Women and Politics in Uganda (2000) and Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania (1997). She has a forthcoming book co-authored with Isabel Casimiro, Joy Kwesiga and Alice Mungwa entitled Women in Movement: Transformations in African Political Landscapes (Cambridge University Press).

Tripp has edited Sub-Saharan Africa: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women's Issues Worldwide (2003), and co-edited with Myra Marx Ferree Global Feminism: Transnational Women's Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights (New York University Press, 2006), The Women's Movement in Uganda: History, Challenges and Prospects (2002) as well as What Went Right in Tanzania? People's Responses to Directed Development (1996). She has published articles and book chapters on women and politics in Africa; women's responses to economic reform; and transformations of associational life in Africa.

Aili Tripp co-edits (with Kathleen Dolan) the journal Politics & Gender of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. She also co-edits a book series with Stanlie James on Women in Africa and the Diaspora for the University of Wisconsin Press.

Professor Tripp is on research leave 2007-08 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. When she returns in the fall of 2008 she will resume her position as director of the Women's Studies Research Center.