Professor Shirley Randell AO PhD (www.shirleyrandell.com.au) is a global mentor, educator, author, public speaker, change activist, and campaigner for human rights. Shirley was an Australian Inaugural Women of Influence in 2012, a TIAW World of Difference Awardee in 2013, and winner of the Institute of Managers and Leaders ANZ Sir John Storey Lifetime Leadership Achievement Award in 2018. She is a distinguished alumna of the Universities of New England and Canberra, a conjoint professor of the University of Newcastle, and an Associate of the Centre for Sustainable Communities at the University of Canberra.

Shirley has provided specialist technical assistance to governments and agencies in Africa and the Asia Pacific Region over the last 20 years as a leading expert in education, gender mainstreaming, and human rights in developing countries. In 2010, she founded and was the first Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Rwanda.

Shirley has been providing scholarships for women in Rwanda to study for a Masters degree in Social Science (Gender and Development) at the Centre for Gender Studies in the University of Rwanda. On her 80^th birthday earlier in the year Shirley organised a celebration on an Aboriginal boat on the Sydney harbour and asked her guests to donate money for the scholarship rather than birthday presents.

Enough money was donated for her to fund Shirley Randell scholarships for three students in the next cohort. If you are interested in contributing to this endeavour, the account is Australian Westpac Commercial Bank 732-006 A/C Shirley Kaye Randell 807255.

While donations for scholarships in Africa are not tax-deductible in Australia, some of Shirley’s friends in the United States have been able to establish a charitable foundation ‘Empowering Women in Education’ in Maryland for this purpose to fund additional scholarships for each intake in the future – the Secretary of the foundation is Eileen Menton [email protected]

With one of the early volunteer lecturers at the Center for Gender Studies, Dr Hilary Yerbury, Shirley has been working on the book ‘Gender and Learning in Rwanda’ that is in publication by the University of Technology Sydney and will be available in 2021.

This book celebrates a significant initiative supporting social change in Rwanda, the introduction of a master’s program in gender, culture, and development and in so doing acknowledges many of those pioneers involved in its inception in early 2011. These include academics involved in developing and offering subjects in the first weeks of the program as well as graduates who were part of the first cohort of students.

Thus, this book presents an unparalleled mix of aspiration and achievement, of feminist theory and practice. It does not claim to be complete or final, nor is it a snapshot of a single point in time. All the contributions are informed by a set of common experiences, but each writer presents her (or his) own perspective. This is most clearly evident in the short chapters written by the women who brought their diverse scholarly backgrounds together in their passion for the scholarly development of other women and men, in an empowering, feminist, educational experience.

This mix of experiences and the diversity of writings make the book a challenging read and an invaluable resource for anyone interested in research-based approaches to social change, the weaving of personal experience into scholarly reflections, and in insights into leaders in working towards gender equality, a policy area which affects social relationships throughout society, including at the most intimate level.