Anna Kirkland is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Political Science, University of Michigan . She earned her J.D. (2001) and Ph.D. (Jurisprudence and Social Policy, 2003) from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the construction of the legal categories that receive civil rights protections in various jurisdictions of the United States, particularly gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability. She is interested in the politics of gaining legal protections as well as the ways in which ordinary people understand and negotiate their identities through the law.

Her first book, Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood, was recently published by New York University Press. Her published articles analyze transgendered plaintiffs who win their cases, transgender discrimination as sex discrimination, and the efforts of fat rights organizations to combat weight-based discrimination.

Professor Kirkland teaches courses on gender, sexuality, politics and law in Women's Studies and Political Science, and was recently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at the Michigan Law School.