Jennifer S. Hirsch

Jennifer S. Hirsch is Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and co-Director of the Columbia Population Research Center. A medical anthropologist, a 2012 fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and a 2024-25 Radcliffe Fellow, Hirsch’s research agenda spans five intertwined domains: the anthropology of love; gender, sexuality and migration; sexual, reproductive and HIV risk practices; social scientific research on sexual violence, and the intersections between anthropology and public health. In addition to her many articles in leading social science and public health journals, Hirsch’s books include A Courtship After Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families (University of California Press, 2003), which explores changing ideas and practices of love, sexuality and marriage among Mexicans in the U.S. and in Mexico; the coauthored The Secret: Love, Marriage and HIV (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009), and, with Shamus Khan, Sexual Citizens: Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus (WW Norton, 2020). Dr. Hirsch's primary current project, Marriage, Orthodoxy, and a Vision of Empowerment (MOVE), examines coercion and consent in marriage, sex, and reproduction, drawing on case study data collected with Haredi Jews in the greater New York area. 

Dr. Hirsch has been an active contributor to the intellectual life of CPRC. She is a founding member of the Center who for many years led the Gender, Sexuality, Health and HIV Primary Research Area (now the Reproductive Health and HIV Primary Research Area), and continues to participate in its events, as well as in those of the Migration and Immigration group.