Dr. Jaimie Morse, Ph.D., MPH is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a senior visiting fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University. She studies knowledge, technology, and policy in biomedicine and public health, with a focus on the interplay of law, health, human rights, and gender equity in processes of policy change. Her current book project examines these dynamics through the emergence of the sexual assault medical forensic exam (commonly known as the “rape kit”) as a tool of anti-rape activism in emergency medicine in the United States since the 1970s and its adaptation for use with refugees and internally displaced persons to document rape as a war crime.

With the support of the Latina Futures 2050 Lab, Morse is co-leading a student engaged research project with recent UC Santa Cruz alum Valerie Garcia on access to post-rape medical care and mental health services for Latinx and undocumented undergraduate students across the University of California system.

Prior to earning her Ph.D., Morse worked for 10 years in the field of public health, domestically and internationally. Her award-winning work has been published in Genocide Studies and Prevention, Social Science & Medicine, Osiris, and the Journal of Human Rights, and has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, Newcombe and Woodrow Wilson Fellowships, and the Brocher Foundation. She received her B.A. in Political Science and Economics from the University of California, Berkeley; her master’s degree in public health from UCLA; and her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. At UC Santa Cruz, she serves on the Beyond Compliance Initiative Title IX Working Group and is affiliated with the Legal Studies program, Global and Community Health program, Community Studies program, and Science and Justice Research Center.