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About Me

Dr. Nicole Bourbonnais is an Associate Professor of International History at the Graduate Institute.  Her research explores the intersections between the “private” sphere (gender relations, sex, reproduction, and the family), national/international politics, and transnational activism. Her first book, Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean: Reproductive Politics and Practice on Four Islands, 1930-1970 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) traces how birth control campaigns in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and Bermuda were shaped concurrently by colonialism, nationalism, social activism, and working class women’s efforts to control their reproductive lives.  Her next major project, The Gospel of Birth Control: Prophets, Patients, and the Global Family Planning Movement uses intermediary actors – the fieldworkers, doctors, and nurses sent out by international organizations and the local colleagues they worked with – as a vector to connect global and local histories of family planning.  She is also interested in the links between anti-racist and feminist activism in the early twentieth century and the history of maternal and child health.

Dr. Bourbonnais received her BA from the University of British Colombia (Vancouver) and MA/PhD in History from the University of Pittsburgh.  She teaches courses and supervises theses on the subjects of reproductive politics, social history, the history of gender/sexuality, transnational activism, Latin American and Caribbean history, and the history of public health and medicine.

 

Recent Publications

Books

• Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean: Reproductive Politics and Practice on Four Islands, 1930-1970. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2016.

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• “Population Control, Family Planning, and Maternal Health Networks in the 1960s/70s: Diary of an International Consultant,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 93.3 (Fall 2019): 335-364.
• “Our Joan of Arc: Women, Gender, and Authority in the Harmony Division of the UNIA,” in Ronald J. Stephens and Adam Ewing, eds. Global Garveyism: Diasporic Aspirations and Utopian Dreams. University Press of Florida, 2019.
• “Discrimination in Any Shape or Form: Black Activism and Women’s Rights in Interwar Bermuda,” in K. Natanya Duncan and Reena N. Goldthree, eds.  Caribbean Review of Gender Studies Special Issue: Gender and Anticolonialism in the Interwar Caribbean, 12 (October 2018): 143-168.
• “Class, Colour, and Contraception: The Politics of Birth Control in Jamaica, 1938-1968,” in Taitu Heron and Shakira Maxwell, eds., Social and Economic Studies: Special Issue on Women’s Reproductive Health and Rights in Select Caribbean Countries, 61.3, (September): 7-38. 2012.
• “Dangerously Large: The 1938 Labor Rebellion and the Debate over Birth Control in Jamaica,” New West Indian Guide. 83.1&2 (2009): 39-69. 2009.

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

Caribbean

Expertise by Chronology

20th century

Expertise by Topic

Colonialism, Family, Gender, Human Rights, Medicine, Sexuality, Women