Dr. Damaris Seleina Parsitau is a social scientist and a senior lecturer in religion and gender studies at Egerton University, Kenya. She is also the President of the African Association for the Study of Religion in Africa and Its Diaspora (AASR).
She is also a feminist scholar, a career educationist, a community mobilizer and an advocate for social justice, girls’ education and women and youth empowerment and leadership development!
Dr. Parsitau received her honors at Egerton University, MA at University of Nairobi and Ph.D at Kenyatta University, Kenya. She is also a recipient of many prestigious fellowships including as a Research Associate at Harvard University, the Brookings Institutions, University of Cambridge, UK, University of Edinburgh, Scotland and University of South Africa (UNISA) among many others.
Her doctoral work was located with African Pentecostalism and its civic and gendered engagement. Her more recent research focuses on the intersections between religion, gender and sexuality in Africa with a special focus on women’s bodies, sexual and gender based violence, masculinities and patriarchal imaginaries in African Pentecostal Churches. She considers this to be a core emerging research focus for her within a contested social, political and religious space.
Dr. Parsitau has presented papers at several international conferences in the USA, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, Morocco, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Côte D'ivoire, Ethiopia, South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya among many others.
In 2018-2019, she was appointed as a visiting research associate and visiting Associate Professor by Harvard University’s Divinity School in the Women Studies in Religion Programme (WSRP) where she taught graduate students and undertook research for her upcoming book project. She also delivered public lectures to students and faculty at Harvard, Colby College in Maine and Calvin University in Michigan Grand Rapids and University of Leicester among others.
In 2017, she worked as an Echidna Global Scholar at the Washington DC based policy think tank, the Brookings Institutions, centre for Universal education where she researched on global issues in girls’ education. She presented her work at the fringes of the UN general Assembly and many other fora. At the Brooking Institutions, she received training in policy writing, evidenced based research, policy communication and implementation, project management and a three year long leadership development training programme.
Dr. Parsitau is widely published both in regional and international journals with articles that examine the intersections between religion, women’s bodies and sexualities. She has also published heavily on other themes in the fields of anthropology, gender and feminist studies, politics, media and sociology of religion. She considers herself a multi-disciplinary Scholar.
Dr Parsitau serves on the editorial board of several journals including as an editorial advisory board member of T&T Clark Studies in Social Ethics, Ethnography and Theology, Bloomsbury, African Journal of Gender and Religion, University of Western Cape in South Africa 2018, the Journal of Religion, Taylor and Francis and Journal of Modern African Studies, University of Cambridge Press 2017 among many others.
In 2018, she was recognized by the Next Einstein Forum and Mawazo Institute as 1 of 20 Most Influential Kenyan Scientists in the Faces of Kenyan Science 2018 and one of a hundred most influential Kenyans.
Dr. Parsitau has won many research grants and consultancies with leading global institutions in the UK, USA, Europe, Canada and Africa and undertakes research with researchers from many universities around the world.
She is also a reviewer of projects, papers and an external examiner for various international universities and other research institutions. She has also examined thesis for global universities and supervised a large cohort of MA and Doctoral students in areas such gender and feminist studies, masculinities, cultural studies, women leadership, sexuality and violence studies.
Dr. Parsitau is a community mobilizer who runs two non-profit organizations: Let Maasai Girls Learn(LMGL) and Osotua Le Maa. She works tirelessly to mentor and inspire social and gendered change in her Maasai community and beyond.
Dr Parsitau is a social influencer, a policy blogger, and a columnist with the Elephant.
