Jael Silliman is an author, scholar, and women’s right activist. She currently works as a consultant on gender and development, women of color and reproductive rights, and gender and environment issues. She lives in New York City and Calcutta. She is widely held in libraries worldwide.[1]
Early life and education
Silliman grew up in Calcutta, India and attended Loreto House. She earned her B.A. in History and Politics of South Asia and China from Wellesley College, and M.Ed. in Planning and Administration for International Development from Harvard University. She went on to do her M.A. in History from University of Texas-Austin, and her Doctorate in Education is from Columbia University.
Career
On completing her doctorate, Silliman became a Program Officer at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and managed the Sustainable Agriculture Portfolio, the Population portfolio which she transformed into a Reproductive Rights Portfolio and introduced grants on Gender and Environment issues. She then moved to the University of Iowa where she became a tenured Associate Professor of Women Studies. In 2002, Silliman began a six-year term as the Program Officer for reproductive rights at the Ford Foundation, for its Human Rights Unit.
She has several publications to her credit, having co-written Undivided Rights: Women of Colour Organizing for Reproductive Justice with Elena Gutierrez, Loretta Ross and Marlene Gerber Fried, and co-edited Policing the National Body: Race, Gender, and Criminalization with Anannya Bhattacharjee. Apart from writing several academic papers on transnational feminist issues, women's rights and reproductive rights, she has also worked on issues relating to the Calcutta Jewish community. Most recently, she has developed Recalling Jewish Calcutta, a digital archive which has brought to attention the rich cultural heritage of the Jewish community in Calcutta. She collaborated with the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University; Trinity College, Dublin and National University of Ireland, Maynooth for the creation of this website. She has been awarded the Fulbright Program scholarship, and her most recent publications include novels: The Man With Many Hats, The Teak Almirah and a book about Kolkata's holy places: Where Gods Reside. Jael Silliman writes for international and Indian media outlets, including Scroll.in, The Telegraph, The Hindu, Business Standard, Huffington Post and others.
