Paisley Currah


Paisley Currah is a professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was born in Ontario, Canada, received a B.A. from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario and an M.A and Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. He lives in Brooklyn.

Research

Currah was the founding editor, with Susan Stryker, of , the first non-medical academic journal devoted to transgender issues, which began publication in 2014. When the journal first launched, Currah told Inside Higher Education: "Starting the journal was exciting but kind of daunting. For a long time, there have been a lot of articles and book-length treatments of transgender topics. One of the ideas behind TSQ was to draw readers' attention to how much work there is being done in the field."
With Monica J. Casper, Currah co-edited Corpus: An Interdisciplinary Reader on Bodies and Knowledge,. He also co-edited, with Shannon Minter and Richard Juang, Transgender Rights, which won the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies and was a finalist for the 2007 Lambda Literary Awards in the Transgender category. In 2002, Currah received Wayne F. Placek Award from the American Psychological Foundation.
In 2015, he talked to Time magazine about transgender naming practices and his decision to keep his birth-assigned first name, explaining that its rarity during his childhood rendered the name non-gender specific. Currah currently teaches at Brooklyn College.

Public policy and transgender rights advocacy

As a founding board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, Currah has advocated for transgender rights at all levels of government. He also serves on the board of directors Global Action for Trans Equality. He served on the advisory board of Human Rights Watch Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program. From January 2005-December 2006, he sat on the External Advisory Committee to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for the Amendment of Birth Certificates for Transgender Persons. From November 2004 to December 2005, he served on the Citizen's Advisory Committee Transgender Subcommittee, New York City Human Resources Administration and in that capacity was a co-author of "Recommended Best Practices for Working With and Serving Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Employees and Clients." He was a co-founder of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, and helped draft the legislation to amend the New York City Human Rights Law to include discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.

Academic affiliations

Currah is professor of political science and women's & gender studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He served as the chair of the Department of Political Science from 2011-2014. He served as the Executive Director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York from 2003-2007. Currah sits on the editorial boards of , Women's Studies Quarterly, and Sexuality Research and Social Policy. His service on advisory boards includes: ; Sexuality and the Law, Social Science Research Network; International Resource Network, a project hosted at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies and funded by the Ford Foundation; the University Consortium on Sexuality Research and Training.

Selected works

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