The Organization of American Historians recently announced the recipients of its 2026 awards and prizes. Among these honors are four awards for excellence in service to the profession. Two of these awards went to women in academia.
Mary Ziegler, the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis School of Law, received the Award for Contributions to Public Policy, which recognizes a scholar who has made a significant contributions to U.S. public policy through historical research.
Dr. Ziegler is an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to present day. A Guggenheim Fellow, she is one of the world’s leading historians of debates in the United States over abortion, IVF, and reproduction. Dr. Ziegler has advised governors and members of Congress and submitted congressional testimony on questions involving reproduction. She is the author of several books, including Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction (Yale University Press, 2025).
Before coming to UC Davis, Dr. Ziegler was the Daniel P.S. Paul Visiting Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School and the Stearns Weaver Miller Professor at Florida State University School of Law. She earned both her bachelor’s degree in English and American literature and language and Romance languages and literatures and her juris doctorate from Harvard University.
Barbara Ransby, the John D. MacArthur Chair and LAS Distinguished Professor of Black Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and History at the University of Illinois Chicago, received the Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award. The honor is presented to an individual whose contributions have significantly enriched our understanding and appreciation of American history.
Through decades of scholarship, mentorship, and public engagement, Dr. Ransby has helped shape the study of African American history, social movements, and Black feminist thought. She focuses her work on the intellectual traditions and organizing strategies that have shaped movements for racial justice and democracy in the United States. At UIC, she directs the Social Justice Initiative, a project that promotes connections between academics and community organizers doing work on social justice. Dr. Ransby is the author of several books, including Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2018).
Dr. Ransby has been a UIC faculty member since 1996. Earlier, she taught and directed the Center for African American Research at DePaul University in Chicago. She earned her bachelor’s degree in history from Columbia University in New York City and her master’s and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Michigan.