MEET THE LEGACY LAB PARTICIPANTS

Sherri Burr is the Dickason Chair and Regents Professor Emerita at the University of New Mexico School of Law. She joined the faculty after having received her A.B. (Politics) from Mount Holyoke College, her M.P.A (International Relations) from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and her J.D. from Yale Law School. In 1994, she received tenure and promotion to full professor, becoming the first African American female to do so in New Mexico. In 2015, she was awarded a Monticello Fellowship to conduct research on the Free Blacks of Virginia, that culminated in her 27th book, Complicated Lives: Free Blacks in Virginia, 1619-1865, which  was published in 2019 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History. In 2024-25, she became the Inaugural Black Women United for Action Fellow at the George Washington Presidential library to examine what happened to the enslaved population after the deaths of George and his wife Martha. Her latest book, Living with Nephew, is her first memoir and was published in 2026. She is a former chair of the Albuquerque Museum Board of Trustees.