Randa Tawil received her PhD in American Studies from Yale University in 2020 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Texas Christian University. She has published articles on immigration and its impact on other public policies, the intersection of race and feminism, and modern-day imperialism. Texas Christian University awarded her the Wise Woman Teacher of the Year in 2021, and she has been awarded more than a dozen grants and fellowships including the Mellon Initiative for Just Futures. Randa’s work at the National Archives will center on the criminalization of migrant mothers in the United States, and how the state used evolving medical technology and the stigma of pregnancy as a “disease” to police immigrant women and use pregnancy as a grounds for deportation. Using Record Group 85, which documents investigations into pregnant women, Randa will weave together a narrative of the intersections between migration, law, and medicine that she will publish in an upcoming book.

Read more: History Fellow Mines Immigration Records for Forthcoming Book Chapter