Elizabeth Sharrow

I am Associate Professor of Public Policy & History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Policy and Department of History (affiliated faculty in the Department of Political Science) and Director of Faculty Research at the UMass Amherst Institute for Social Science Research.

My research interests focus on the politics of public policy and how policy in the United States has shaped understandings of sex and gender, race, sexuality, disability, and class over the past fifty years in the U.S.  

My summary C.V. is available here.

My book, Equality Unfulfilled: How Title IX's Policy Design Undermines Change to College Sports (with James Druckman, 2023), is published with Cambridge University Press in their Studies in Gender and Politics series. It was awarded a 2024 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title from the American Library Association, the 2024 Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book on U.S. national policy from the American Political Science Association, and the 2024 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award.

My scholarship is published in American Politics Research; the Journal of Women, Policy & Politics; Laws; Political Behavior; Political Communication; Political Research Quarterly; Politics & Gender; Politics, Groups, and Identities; Public Opinion Quarterly; Race and Social Problems; Social Science Quarterly; TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly; the Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science, and in Stating the Family: New Directions in the Study of American Politics (eds. Julie Novkov and Carol Nackenoff, University Press of Kansas, 2020).  It is featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Conversation, the Boston Globe, Vox, the Scholars Strategy Network, the Gender Policy Report of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the Women's Sports Foundation blog, and on National Public Radio.  I am the recipient of the 2022 Best Paper Award (with James Druckman) from the Education Politics & Policy Section of the American Political Science Association, and the 2021 Politics, Groups, and Identities Best Article Award from the Western Political Science Association.

In 2024, I worked as PI on a major report for the Women's Sports Foundation, entitled Play to Lead: The Generational Impact of Sports on Women's Leadership. I also currently hold a Distinguished Lectureship with the Organization of American Historians.

I published a co-authored opinion piece in The Washington Post.  I was a 2020 UMass Public Engagement Program (PEP) Faculty Fellow and serve now on the PEP Steering Committee.  I have been interviewed for national publications, including the New York Times, the Associated Press, Glamour, The 19th, and Sports Illustrated. I've also appeared in the ESPN docuseries, 37 Words, on Title IX's 50th anniversary, and in the documentary, The Herricanes, about the history of the National Women's Football League. Watch the trailer here.

My research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the American Political Science Association (APSA), the Myra Sadker Foundation, the Gerald Ford Presidential Foundation, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Williams Institute and the Women's Sports Foundation.  For my collaborative work with #MeTooPoliSci, we were co-awarded the 2019 Jane Mansbridge Award from the Women's Caucus for Political Science and a NSF ADVANCE Partnership grant.

I teach classes about the history of public policy in the U.S. at all levels of the curriculum.  I am a two-time finalist for the UMass Amherst Distinguished Teaching Award.

In my service work in the discipline of political science, I am past-president of the Sexuality & Politics section of the APSA (president, 2023-24), I served as president of the Women's Caucus for Political Science (2021-22), and served on the Executive Council of the APSA Public Policy section (2020-2023). I am current a member of the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review and Politics & Gender. On campus, I serve on the UMass Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Advisory Board in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and for ten years I served as a Faculty Representative on the UMass Athletic Council where I formerly chaired the Equity & Diversity Subcommittee.  

My Ph.D. is in Political Science with a minor program in Feminist and Critical Sexuality Studies from the University of Minnesota. I hold a Masters in Public Policy (M.P.P.) with a focus on Gender, Law, and Sports Policy from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Before attending graduate school, I was Assistant Women's Rowing Coach at the University of Minnesota for five years.  I am a former collegiate rower.  Outside of the classroom, most people know me as Libby.  I use they/she pronouns.