Jennifer Sherer

Jennifer Sherer is Director of The University of Iowa Labor Center, where she coordinates statewide education and outreach programs reaching over 2,500 workers each year and teaches non-credit classes on a range of workplace rights, communications, labor history, union leadership, and public policy subjects. She also directs the Iowa Labor History Oral Project, and serves on the boards of the UI Center for Human Rights, the Iowa Policy Project, the Labor Studies Journal, the UI Occupational Medicine Residency Program, and on the Finance Committee of the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa.

She was a co-author of the 2012 Iowa Policy Project report “Wage Theft in Iowa” and is currently working on an article chronicling the history of debates over “right to work” legislation in Iowa. Other forthcoming publications include “Making History Every Day: The Iowa Labor History Oral Project and Popular Education” (forthcoming in Civic Labors: Scholars, Teachers, Activists, and Working-Class History U of Illinois Press) and “Labor Education and Leadership Development for Union Women,” with Emily E LB Twarog, Brigid O’Farrell, and Cheryl Coney (forthcoming in Labor Studies Journal).

She first gained experience in the labor movement as a local union officer, a Project Staff Organizer for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE), and an activist in student anti-sweatshop campaigns while earning a PhD in English from the University of Iowa and a BA from Oberlin College.