Scholarship and Biography
Wangui Muigai is a historian of medicine and science. Her research centers on race, gender, and ethical issues in health and health care. A 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow for her work "that addresses important and enduring issues confronting our society," her scholarship has been supported by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Association for the History of Medicine, and Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
She is completing her first book, a history of Black infant mortality, that is forthcoming with Harvard University Press. Her second book project examines the history and ethics of Black women's trust in medicine. It is supported by a multi-year fellowship from the Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics.
At Brandeis she is the 2021 recipient of the Michael L. Walzer '56 Award for Teaching and has developed popular courses on Race and Science, African Americans and Health, Health Activism, and an upper-level course on Infant Mortality. She advises graduate and undergraduate students in histories of science, health, and reproduction.