Prior to Barnard she taught at Queens College, City University of New York for 15 years. Premilla is most interested in visions of social change and the way in which poor and working-class people, especially women of color, have fought for social justice. Her current project examines how class, gender, race, law and culture constitute the meanings of the work of social reproduction and the ways in which domestic workers disrupted these meanings and claimed a right to organize as workers. She is a native of South Africa who came to the U.S. with her parents at age five. She became involved in the anti-apartheid movement in high school and in anti-racism activism on the campus of the University of Michigan, where she was an undergrad.