Lynn M. Thomas is the Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington, Seattle with adjunct appointments in Anthropology and Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies. She is the author of Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya (U California, 2003) and Beneath the Surface: A Transnational History of Skin Lighteners (Duke, 2020), and co-editor of The Modern Girl Around the World (Duke, 2008) and Love in Africa (U Chicago, 2009). She has also served as a co-editor of the Journal of African History, chair of the Department of History, and Interim Executive Director of the School of Drama.