Helen Mary Rizzo is an associate professor of sociology and Unit Head of Sociology at the American University in Cairo, where she serves on the graduate advisory committee of the Cynthia Nelson Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies. Rizzo received her PhD in sociology from Ohio State University in 2000. Her book, Islam, Democracy and the Status of Women: The Case of Kuwait, was published in 2005 by Routledge Press. More recently, she has worked on a British Academy Small Grants funded project, titled Youth Perspectives on Gender Norms and Public Sexual Violence in Cairo: Cultural and Media Perspectives. She is also doing research on social movement campaigns against public space sexual harassment, and masculinities in Egypt.

Writing in the Cairo Review