Vera Institute of Justice

Sara McDougall is a professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the CUNY Graduate Center. She studies gender and justice in the Middle Ages, with a focus on women's experiences of criminal justice in medieval France.

She is the author of two books—Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late-Medieval Champagne (2012) and Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, c.800-1230 (2017). Among other editorial projects, she has co-edited special issues for Law & History Review and Gender & History on historical responses to infanticide and on marriage in global history. Recent articles examine women's punishment for having sex, infanticide prosecutions, consequences of extramarital pregnancy, illegitimacy and the priesthood, adultery, and spousal homicide in medieval France. She has written on these and related topics for Slate, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Fellowships and visiting positions include the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library, Paris II Panthéon-Assas, the University of Oxford, University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She is currently writing a microhistory of an assault survivor from 1472, and co-editing with Arnaud Fossier a special issue of Medieval People, Marriage on Trial: Women, Gender, and Family in the Later Middle Ages.