Brianne Felsher (they/them) is a PhD candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at University of California, Berkeley. Their dissertation project focuses on the legal history of queer families in the United States from the early 1800s through the early 1900s. They argue that queer people deliberately navigated legal institutions to form their families, and that queer families were neither inconceivable nor presumptively illegal.

Their article, “‘Sex Changed by a Court’s Decree’: The History-and-Tradition of Gender Transitions in the United States,” is forthcoming in Georgetown Law Journal. Outside UC Berkeley, Brianne teaches free online queer history classes open to the community. They also volunteer for the Monroe County History Center’s project on the queer history of Bloomington.

Their work has been supported by the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation and the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Association. They have a JD from Berkeley Law and a BA from Columbia University.