Laura Briggs
Laura Briggs is a feminist critic and historian of reproductive politics and US empire. She works on transnational and transracial adoption and the relationship between race, sex, gender, and US imperialism. Her 2012 book Somebody's Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption won the James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians for best book on the history of US race relations and has been featured on numerous college syllabi in the US and Canada. Briggs serves as professor and chair of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Education
Laura Briggs received her bachelor's degree in women's studies from Mount Holyoke College. She obtained a master's degree in theology and secondary education from Harvard University and completed her doctorate in American Civilization at Brown University. Briggs received the Woodrow Wilson/Johnson & Johnson Dissertation Grant in Women’s Health for her dissertation project. Career
After completing her Ph.D., Briggs taught in the departments of Women's Studies and Anthropology at the University of Arizona from 1997 to 2011 before serving as the head of UA's department of Gender and Women's Studies from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2008 to 2010. She became the Associate Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona in March 2010 and held this position until July 2011. In August 2011, Briggs left the University of Arizona to become professor and chair of the department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Briggs has held fellowships at the Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah, and the University of Michigan Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. Throughout her career, Briggs has been actively involved in the feminist and LGBTQ movements, Latin American solidarity politics, union organizing, and AIDS activism. She was an organizer of the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987, and, from 1989 to 1991, she was a reporter for Gay Community News, reporting on subjects ranging from reproductive rights in South Africa and Central America to Boston LGBT politics. She was a founder and organizer of the Tepotzlan Conference  and volunteered as a border Samaritan during her time at the University of Arizona. In 2016 and 2017, Briggs served on the Executive Council of the American Studies Association. Her writing about the Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl 2013 Supreme Court case has been featured on local and national sites. 