Paisley Currah is a Professor of Political Science and Women’s & Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Currah has written widely on transgender issues, including on topics such as discrimination, sex reclassification, and the transgender rights movement. He is the co-founder of the leading journal in transgender studies, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Currah’s book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, was released May 31, 2022 by New York University Press. His current book project looks at the contemporary legislative assaults on transgender people, especially transgender youth, in the United States. He is also working on an edited volume, with Blas Radi, on transgender people and the state in the Americas.

Currah has advocated for transgender rights at all levels of government. He was a founding board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, served on the founding board of directors of Global Action for Trans Equality, and sat on the advisory board of Human Rights Watch’s LGBT Program.

Currah co-edited, with Shannon Minter and Richard Juang, Transgender Rights, the first book on the movement for transgender rights, which won the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Currah received an MA and PhD in Government from Cornell University and a BA (Hon.) in Political Studies from Queen's University at Kingston, Canada. He also teaches for Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights.