Joanna Wuest, Ph.D.

Joanna Wuest (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University.

Wuest is a sociolegal scholar specializing in LGBTQ+ rights, religion, and health, whose research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the American Association of University Women, and the American Political Science Association.

She is the author of Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2023), which was featured on an episode of WNYC’s Radiolab. She is currently writing a book on how “dark money” and religious liberty legal organizations have shaped social welfare, civil rights, and health policy. Her popular writing has appeared in outlets including The Nation, Boston Review, and Dissent, and her academic work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Social Science & Medicine, Law & Social Inquiry, and other peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.

Research Area: LGBTQ Rights


Read more from Joanna Wuest:  

Works By Joanna Wuest, Ph.D.

Drs. Kelsy Burke, Andrew R. Flores, Suzanna Krivulskaya, and Joanna Wuest are 2023-2024 PRRI Public Fellows studying the intersection of politics, religion, and LGBTQ rights. This Spotlight Analysis details the findings of their original, collaborative

Joanna Wuest, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts where she teaches constitutional law, American politics, and gender and sexuality politics. She is a 2023-2024 PRRI Public Fellow. For

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