Joanna Wuest is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Stony Brook, she served as the Fund for Reunion-Cotsen Fellow in LGBT Studies in the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and as Assistant Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College.

Wuest is a sociolegal scholar focusing on LGBTQ+ rights, health, and conservatism. She is the author of Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2023), which was featured on an episode of Radiolab and received an Honorable Mention for the Society for Social Studies of Science’s 2024 Rachel Carson Prize.

Her other academic work has appeared in journals such as Perspectives on Politics, Social Science & Medicine, Law & Social Inquiry, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies as well as various edited volumes. ​Much of this research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the American Association of University Women, and the American Political Science Association. Her public writing has appeared in outlets including the Nation, Boston Review, Psyche, and Dissent, and she has been a Public Fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

She is currently writing a book titled Church Against State: How Industry Groups Lead the Religious Liberty Assault on Civil Rights, Health, and Social Welfare.

A full list of her work is available at https://www.joannawuest.com/