Prof. Sara McDougall, Ph.D.

Sara McDougall is Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in History in 2009 and currently holds a position as Medieval Studies Coordinator as well as being a member of the Faculty in Biography & Memoir, French, History, and Medieval Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research focuses on legal history, women’s history, family history, history of the Catholic Church, crime and sexuality, and gender. She is the author of 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).

Sara McDougall is a member of Prof. Dr. Julia Burkhardt’s CAS Research Group “Femicide: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Global Historical Phenomenon”. She will be in Munich as a Visiting Fellow in June and July 2026.