Megann Licskai, PhD

Megann Licskai (pronunciation) is a historian of medicine who focuses on 20th- and 21st-century reproductive politics and health activism. She received her B.A. in Contemporary Studies and History of Science from the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and her PhD from HSHM at Yale. Before returning to Yale to teach, she spent a year as a Faculty Fellow in the Foundation Year Program, a writing-intensive great books program at her alma mater where she taught everything from Gilgamesh to Audre Lorde.

Megann’s current book project is tentatively titled “Pro-Life Science: the Production and Circulation of Reproductive Knowledge in North American Anti-Abortion Movements, 1968-2003,” and historically examines the ways in which anti-abortion movements have used scientific and medical spaces, language, and technologies to make authority claims and to effect political change. More broadly, Megann is interested in histories of reproductive health; the ethics of doing history (medical and otherwise); changing forms of American conservatism; feminist science studies; and questions of life, death and personhood. As a teacher, she aims to offer courses that help students to develop research and argumentative skills to deeply consider and articulate the historical and contemporary import of such questions.

In addition to her research and teaching, Megann has spent time working for Yale’s Medical Historical Library, where she co-curated and co-coordinated a number of exhibits focusing on health justice and the history of medicine. Megann also spent time working for a small health non-profit in her hometown of London, Ontario. Both roles reshaped her thinking about medical practices and ethics. When not working, Megann loves playing her autoharp and cooking fun things. She suspects that she is the foremost Pokémon expert among the HSHM faculty.