Jeal Silliman born into the Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta, was educated at Loreto House, a Catholic school in Calcutta, and later at a boarding school in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. A scholarship took her to Wellesley College. She continued her graduate studies at Harvard University and the University of Texas at Austin, and received her doctoral degree in International Education at Columbia University. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Women's Studies department at the University of Iowa. Her publications include the co-editorship of Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment and Development and the forthcoming Sex, Race and Surveillance: Feminist Perspectives from US, as well as numerous articles in the area of gender and economic development, and third world women's movements.