This website stores cookies on your computer. These cookies are used to collect information about how you interact with our website and allow us to remember your browser. We use this information to improve and customize your browsing experience, for analytics and metrics about our visitors both on this website and other media, and for marketing purposes. By using this website, you accept and agree to be bound by UVic’s Terms of Use for web and social media privacy.  If you do not agree to the above, you can configure your browser’s setting to “do not track.”

Skip to main content
People Departments Maps Buildings Rooms A-Z
University
of Victoria
Apply Library
Sign in Online tools Sign out
Faculty of Humanities

New Chair Transgender Studies

June 17, 2026

Jules Gill-Peterson.

Chair in Transgender Studies Announcement

We are very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson as the Chair in Transgender Studies at the University of Victoria, effective July 1, 2026. The Chair will be housed in the Department of History but has a broad interdisciplinary mandate. Dr. Gill-Peterson joins us from Johns Hopkins University, where she has served as Associate Professor of History. She brings to this role a distinguished record of scholarship that has reshaped the field of Transgender Studies.

Dr. Gill-Peterson is a leading expert in transgender history, including the history of transgender medicine, culture, and politics. She is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), the first scholarly work to establish the long history of transgender childhood and challenge prevailing assumptions about its novelty. The book received the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and the Children's Literature Association Book Award, and has become a foundational text in the field. Her subsequent book, A Short History of Trans Misogyny (Verso, 2024), further demonstrates her command of the theoretical and historical dimensions of transgender experience. She previously served as a general co-editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, the flagship journal of the discipline, and has held prestigious fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Kinsey Institute. Her next book, Transgender Liberalism: How an Elite Class Shaped an Identity, will be published by Harvard University Press next year.

Dr. Gill-Peterson's appointment is the outcome of a rigorous national and international search that attracted an exceptionally strong field of candidates. The selection committee was struck by the depth and originality of her scholarship, the clarity of her vision for the Chair, and the breadth of her engagement with both academic and community audiences. We are confident that she will bring exceptional energy and intellectual leadership to this position.

In welcoming Dr. Gill-Peterson, we also mark the conclusion of a truly extraordinary chapter in the life of this Chair. Dr. Aaron Devor conceived of and established the world's first and only Chair in Transgender Studies, a position that has become a model for the field internationally. Over the course of his tenure, Dr. Devor built the Chair into a hub of scholarship, community engagement, and advocacy. In collaboration with UVic Libraries, he founded the world's largest Transgender Archives, which spans over 530 linear feet of materials in 15 languages from 23 countries across seven continents. In 2014, he established the Moving Trans History Forward conferences, which have brought together scholars, activists, and community members from around the world to advance Trans+ history and scholarship. His contributions to the Standards of Care of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), his decades of nationally award-winning teaching, and his sustained commitment to building strong and resilient Trans+ social and cultural communities, have left a lasting mark on this institution and far beyond it. The University of Victoria owes Dr. Devor an immense debt of gratitude, and we look forward to celebrating his legacy in the months ahead.

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Gill-Peterson to UVic. Her appointment reflects the University's enduring commitment to Transgender Studies as a vital field of inquiry and to the communities whose lives and histories it illuminates.

Annalee Lepp
Dean, Faculty of Humanities

Lois Harder
Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences