My research interests sit at the intersections of the history of gender and sexuality, medicine, and surveillance. My PhD thesis examines the first women in medicine, policing, and corrections in the Progressive era United States. Women’s entrance to these male-dominated professions coincided with new, far-ranging prohibitions on female sexuality and reproduction, including the criminalisation of abortion, regulation of sex work, and eugenic lawmaking. I argue that these two phenomena were not simply coincidental, but profoundly interconnected. Would-be state and private regulators needed to devise new methods and personnel to intervene in women’s intimate lives; enter the female professional.After my doctoral studies, I hope to pursue a career in women’s health.
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