Aili Mari Tripp is Professor of Political Science and Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also director of the Women's Studies Research Center. Her teaching and research interests are in African politics, comparative politics, women and politics and gender studies in an international context.

She co-authored with Isabel Casimiro, Joy Kwesiga and Alice Mungwa African Women's Movements: Transforming Political Landscapes(Cambridge University Press, 2009). She is also author of Women and Politics in Uganda (2000) and Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania (1997). Recently she completed a book manuscript Museveni's Uganda: Paradoxes of Power and is currently working on another book entitled, Gender, Power and Peacemaking in Africa.Tripp has edited and co-edited numerous other collections. She has published articles and book chapters on women’s movements and global feminism, civil society in Africa, gender and politics in Africa, women in post-conflict African countries, and on democratization and semi-authoritarianism in Africa.

Aili Tripp co-edits (with Kathleen Dolan) the journal Politics & Gender of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. She also co-edits a book series with Stanlie James on Women in Africa and the Diaspora for the University of Wisconsin Press. Tripp is program chair for the 2009 African Studies Association meeting in New Orleans.

She has been a vice president of the American Political Science Association and has served on the boards of the African Studies Association, American Political Science Association, National Council for Research on Women, Tanzania Studies Association, University of Wisconsin Press, and numerous other journals and book series.

Tripp has served as an expert consultant for UNESCO, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), the World Bank, USAID, US State Department, China-Africa Development Fund, the Finnish Foreign Ministry, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on violence against women, and numerous other agencies.