Zainab Monisola Olaitan is a Post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy (CIDP) at Queen’s University. She is a political scientist with expertise in gender and representation, peace and conflict studies, and African politics. Her research focuses on locating women across different sectors with a central question: how are women represented in Africa? She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Pretoria, where she also taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations Theory, Democratisation in Africa, and Conflicts in Africa. She also holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Pretoria as a 2019 Mastercard Foundation Scholar, a Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) Honours from the University of Cape Town as a 2018 Mandela Rhodes Scholar, and a BSc (Hons) in Political Science with First Class from the University of Lagos. She has published widely in journals, book projects, and policy briefs on themes bordering on peace and conflict studies, gender and representation, and African politics. She is the author of Women’s Representation in African Politics: Beyond Numbers (Palgrave, 2024). In 2022, she was awarded the Margaret McNamara Education Grant (MMEG) for impactful research on women.

Zainab’s research focuses on locating women across different sectors with a central question: how are women represented in Africa? She is currently working on an Afrofeminist interrogation of the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda in Africa. Zainab is a member of the African Association of Political Science (AAPS), the African Indigenous Knowledge Research Network (AIKRN), and the Lagos Studies Association (LSA).

Aside from her academic and research work, Zainab is a Co-founder and Team lead at AfroTada. AfroTada is a social enterprise that aims to curate and preserve African content and knowledge on a single, easy-to-navigate platform. Zainab loves to dance, watch movies, and enjoy a good time with friends.