Professor
Dr. Jessica R. Pliley (she, her, hers) is the Ingram Professor at Texas State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender History from The Ohio State University. She is the author of Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI (Harvard, 2014) and the co-editor of Capturing Labor: Unfree Work in the Southwest (UT Press, forthcoming 2026), Fighting Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking: History and Contemporary Policy (Cambridge, 2021), and Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890-1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and ‘Immorality’ (Cambridge, 2016). Her work has appeared in Gender & History, the Journal of Women’s History, the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and the Journal of the History of Sexuality and several anthologies. Her current research explores the long history of the anti-trafficking movement from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. She is currently the co-president of the Coordinating Council for Women in History and a trustee of the Berkshire's Conference for the History of Women's, Gender, and Sexualities.