Lauren MacIvor Thompson

Lauren MacIvor Thompson (she/her/hers) is a historian of the intersections of American medicine, law, and women’s rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a specialization in the history of contraception in the United States.

She is an assistant professor of history and gender and women’s studies at Kennesaw State University and serves as a faculty fellow at the Georgia State University College of Law’s Center for Law, Health, & Society. 

Her completed manuscript, "Women’s Votes, Doctors’ Rights: The Making of the American Birth Control Movement” is under contract with Rutgers University Press.

Her new research focuses broadly on the history of state-federal pharmaceutical and licensing regulation with respect to women's health. She has published numerous articles and op-eds including work in Law and History Review, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Her research has been supported by fellowships including awards from the American Philosophical Society and the New York Academy of Medicine. Thompson is also a frequent public speaker and holds an Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship.

I am incredibly excited to be working with OBOS. As a historian of women's health, to be part of this legacy is an honor and privilege.