Dr Shana Cohen is the Director of TASC.

She has been director since 2017. In addition to her directorship, she works directly on projects involving social inclusion, economic inequality, democracy, and climate justice. For instance, she is drafting a report for Safe Ireland on how social policy can support victims of DSGBV. She has also worked on the social prescribing programme with the Coop in NEIC and policy reports on migration and social solidarity in the EU, as well as the effect of the financial crisis on the top 10% of income earners in Ireland, Sweden, Spain, and the UK. In addition to her work at TASC, Shana is an Affiliate Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge.

She has published on social action and activism, as well as social change in North Africa, her original area of academic research. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and an AB from Princeton University.

Before joining TASC, she was Deputy Director of the Woolf Institute in Cambridge. In her role at the Institute, she became engaged with interfaith and intercultural relations in Europe, India, and the Middle East.

Beyond academic research, Shana has extensive experience working with NGOs and community-based organisations in a number of countries, including Morocco, the US, the UK, and India. This work has involved project design, management, and evaluation as well as advocacy. She has consulted for the World Bank, the Grameen Bank Foundation, and other private foundations and trusts.