About
Asale Angel-Ajani is a professor and director of Women’s and Gender Studies at City University of New York, City College. Lecturing widely on topics ranging from mass incarceration to social justice, she has been invited to teach and lead workshops at over fifty college campuses and venues in the United States and countless more globally.
Asale has worked with refugees and incarcerated people all over the world. She was a research fellow at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Institute, as well as the first American researcher to gain entry into Rebibbia, the notorious Italian prison. Her research has contributed to reports for the International Organization for Migration, Africa Watch (Human Rights Watch), UNESCO and UNHCR, among several other NGOs. As an activist, Asale founded Texas Prison Watch and was an early member of Critical Resistance and Women Care Harlem, NYC.
Asale is the author of Strange Trade: The Story of Two Women Who Risked Everything in the International Drug Trade, which was named by Carte Blanche as the best nonfiction book of 2010. She also has authored the forthcoming Parasitic States and Penal Colonies: Migration and the Carceral World Order. She is the co-editor of Engaged Observer: Activism, Advocacy and Anthropology with Victoria Sanford.
