Anna Kirkland

Anna Kirkland is Kim Lane Scheppele Collegiate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and holds courtesy appointments in Sociology, Political Science, and Health Management and Policy. She is also an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and served as Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) from 2017 to 2022.

Prof. Kirkland is a sociolegal scholar working on the relationships between health, law, and rights in the contemporary U.S. Her latest book, Health Care Civil Rights: How Discrimination Law Fails Patients, examines civil rights protections from discrimination in the American healthcare system and in health care interactions with a focus on gender identity discrimination. It will be published by the University of California Press in April 2025.

Prof. Kirkland is a co-PI with Prof. Gary Harper (School of Public Health) on a 5 year R25 training grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, which funds Student Opportunities for AIDS/HIV Research (SOAR). She is a member of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and served as a committee member for the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering panel that produced Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies Press, June 2018).

Prof. Kirkland is the author of Vaccine Court: The Law and Politics of Injury (New York University Press, 2016), Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood (New York University Press, 2008), co-editor with Jonathan Metzl (Vanderbilt University) of Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality (New York University Press, 2010), and co-editor with Prof. Marie-Andree Jacob from Keele University, UK of Research Handbook on Sociolegal Studies of Medicine and Health (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020).

Prof. Kirkland teaches courses on health discrimination at the law school and gender and the law and health policy in Women's and Gender Studies.

Selected Publications (ORCID 0000-0001-5711-4074):

Perspective—“Physicians as Political Pawns — The Texas Directive on Gender-Affirming Care and Other Moves,” New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 386, No. 16 (April 20, 2022) doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2203746

"Health Insurance Rights and Access to Health Care for Trans People: The Social Construction of Medical Necessity,” with Shauhin Talesh and Angela Perone (December 2021). Online ahead of print: DOI: 10.1111/lasr.12575.

“Dropdown Rights: Categorizing Transgender Discrimination in Healthcare Technologies,” Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 289 (November 2021). Online ahead of print: doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114348

“Civil Rights as Patient Experience: How Healthcare Organizations Handle Discrimination Complaints,” with Mikell Hyman, Law and Society Review, Vol. 55 No. 2 (2021): 273-275. doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12554

Perspective, “Health Coverage and Care for Transgender People — Threats and Opportunities,” with Daphna Stroumsa, New England Journal of Medicine, December 12, 2020. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp2032453

Transition Coverage and Clarity in Self-Insured Corporate Health Insurance Benefit Plans, with Shauhin Talesh and Angela Perone (open access in Transgender Health, September 2020, DOI: 10.1089/trgh.2020.0067)

Opinion: Use science to stop sexual harassment in higher education, with Kathryn B. H. Clancy and Lilia M. Cortina in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences September 2020, 117 (37) 22614-22618; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2016164117

Research Handbook on Sociolegal Studies of Medicine and Health with co-editor Marie-Andrée Jacob (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020).

National Academies Panel Member and co-author, Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies Press, June 2018)

Vaccine Court: The Law and Politics of Injury (New York University Press, 2016)

Co-editor with Jonathan Metzl, Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality (New York University Press, 2010) 

Fat Rights:  Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood (New York University Press, 2008)

Fields of Study:

• law and society
• law and politics of health
• antidiscrimination law
• health insurance
• gender and sexuality in contemporary U.S. law
• rights claiming in organizational cultures