Denise Walsh is Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. Her work is motivated by an interest in how liberal democracies can become more inclusive and just, with a focus on gender, race, and colonialism. She is the author of Imperial Sexism: Why Culture and Women's Rights Don't Clash (Oxford University Press, 2025), which won the 2026 ISA Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Book Prize, and Women's Rights in Democratizing States (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her work has also appeared in Comparative Political Studies, Critical Policy Studies, Politics & Gender, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and Signs, among others. Walsh's current projects include a book on misogyny and political power and a co-authored paper on new strategies to end violence against women in politics. She is a former editor of the American Political Science Review.