Aysha Hidayatullah is Associate Professor of Islamic studies and teaches undergraduate courses on Islam, gender, race, and ethics. She received her MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her BA in Women's Studies from Emory University. She began teaching at the University of San Francisco in 2008.

Her research interests include feminist exegesis of the Qur'an; representations of women in early Islamic history; constructions of femininity and masculinity in the Islamic tradition; feminist methodologies in the study of Islam; racial imaginaries of U.S. Islam; popular discourses on Muslim women in the U.S.; and the pedagogy of Islamic studies.

She is co-founder and current co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Islam, Gender, Women program unit, a setting for supporting reflection on the development of the field of gender and women in Islam. She has worked extensively on a number of projects addressing religious diversity and anti-Muslim prejudice in relationship to teaching, most recently serving on the leadership team for a pedagogical workshop on "Teaching Against Islamophobia" co-sponsored by the American Academy of Religion and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.