Justine Modica is a PhD candidate in U.S. History at Stanford University, and a PhD minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She researches the history of women's labor and care work in the 20th century.

Her dissertation is a historical analysis of child care as a labor issue. The United States experienced a dramatic growth in maternal labor force participation in the second half of the twentieth century but remains one of the only industrialized nations without a comprehensive approach to child care.

Justine's dissertation examines how various groups of Americans built and shaped a waged child care workforce to replace the unwaged labor of mothers caring for children in the home. She examines this history on the levels of both grassroots action and governmental policy, exploring how the approaches of workers, families, municipal governments, federal agencies, and labor unions intersected. Central to her study are the ways that ideologies and practices of race, gender, class, and citizenship shaped the demographics of the childcare workforce, conditions of employment, and the social and monetary value of caring labor.

Justine holds an MA in History from Stanford University and a BA in History from Dartmouth College.