Vera Institute of Justice

Sara McDougall is an associate professor in the Department of Global History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and is also a member of the doctoral faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center, where she directs the medieval studies certificate program. She also serves on the board of the NGO, Libraries Without Borders, USA. She was the Norman Freehling visiting professor at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities in the winter of 2020. She has also held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and NYU Law School. She completed her doctorate in medieval history at Yale University in May 2009. She has published two books, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late-Medieval Champagne (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) and Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, c.800-1230 (Oxford, 2017). She has also published opinion pieces related to her research in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Perspectives.