Kirsten Fermaglich received her Ph.D. from New York University in 2001 and since then has worked as an Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University. She studies secular Jews as members and outsiders to the Jewish community. She also studies the intersections of gender, race, class, and family with ethnic identity. She published A Rosenberg by Any Other Name in 2018 and is now researching academic Jewish migration to college towns throughout the United States after World War II.