Joan Wallach Scott (born 1941), is a professor emerita in the School of Social Science in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 1962, she earned her B.A. from Brandeis University and in1964 an M.S. from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed her PhD in1969 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Between 1970 and 2015 she has held various professional positions including those at Northwestern University (1972-1974) and Brown University (1980-1985). Her areas of specialisation include challenging the foundations and nature of conventional historical evidence, experience and practice, including the role of narrative in the writing of history. Her influential works include: Gender: A useful category of historical analysis (1986); Gender and the politics of history (1988); Only paradoxes to offer: French feminists and the rights of man (1996); and Knowledge, power, and academic freedom (2018).