Publications by Michael Biggs



‘England’s GP Patient Survey Provides Unreliable Data on Transgender Patients’ (letter), Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 53, 2024, pp. 2423–26

‘Gender Identity in the 2021 Census of England and Wales: How a Flawed Question Created Spurious Data’, Sociology, vol. 58, 2024, pp. 1305–23

‘Feminism and Support for the Transgender Movement in Britain’ (visualization), Socius, vol. 10, 2024 (Stata program on Harvard dataverse)

(with Leor Sapir and Lisa Littman) ‘The U.S. Transgender Survey of 2015 Supports Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria: Revisiting the “Age of Realization and Disclosure of Gender Identity Among Transgender Adults”’ (peer-reviewed letter), Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 53, 2024, pp. 863–68

‘The Dutch Protocol for Juvenile Transsexuals: Origins and Evidence’, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, vol. 49, 2023, pp. 348–68 (Stata program on Harvard dataverse)

‘The Technology of Puberty Suppression’, Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Alice Sullivan and Selina Todd, Routledge, 2023, pp. 175–93

‘Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after Hormones’ (letter), New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 389, 2023, pp. 1536–37

‘Suicide by Clinic-Referred Transgender Adolescents in the United Kingdom’ (peer-reviewed letter), Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 51, 2022, pp. 685–90

‘Queer Theory and the Transition from Sex to Gender in English Prisons’, Journal of Controversial Ideas, vol. 2, 2022, pp. 1–21

‘Revisiting the Effect of GnRH Analogue Treatment on Bone Mineral Density in Young Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria’ (letter), Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism, vol. 34, 2021, pp. 937–39 (Stata program on Harvard dataverse)

‘Gender Dysphoria and Psychological Functioning in Adolescents Treated with GnRHa: Comparing Dutch and English Prospective Studies’ (peer-reviewed letter), Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 49, 2020, pp. 2231–2236 (Stata program on Harvard dataverse)

‘Puberty Blockers and Suicidality in Adolescents Suffering from Gender Dysphoria’ (peer-reviewed letter), Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 49, 2020, pp. 2227–29 (online supplement provides data)

‘Did Local Civil Rights Protest Liberalize Whites’ Racial Attitudes?’ (with Christopher Barrie and Kenneth T. Andrews), Research and Politics, vol. 7, no. 3, 2020, pp. 1–8 (data and Stata program on Harvard dataverse)

‘Britain’s Experiment with Puberty Blockers’, Inventing Transgender Children and Young People, ed. Michele Moore and Heather Brunskell-Evans, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, pp. 40–55

‘A Letter to the Editor Regarding the Original Article by Costa et al: Psychological Support, Puberty Suppression, and Psychosocial Functioning in Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria’ (letter), Journal of Sexual Medicine, vol. 16, 2019, p. 2043

‘Size Matters: Quantifying Protest by Counting Participants’, Sociological Methods and Research, vol. 47, no. 3, 2018, pp. 351–83 (supplement provides data and Stata program)

(with Neil F. Ketchley) ‘The Educational Contexts of Islamist Activism: Elite Students and Religious Institutions in Egypt’, Mobilization, vol. 22, no. 1, 2017, pp. 57–76

(with Juta Kawalerowicz) ‘Anarchy in the U.K.: Economic Deprivation, Social Disorganization, and Political Grievances in the London Riot of 2011’, Social Forces, vol. 94, no. 2, 2015, 673–98, 2015

‘Protest Campaigns and Movement Success: Desegregating the U.S. South in the Early 1960s’ (with Kenneth T. Andrews), American Sociological Review, vol. 80, no. 2, 2015, pp. 416–43

‘Has Protest Increased Since the 1970s? How a Survey Question Can Construct a Spurious Trend’, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 66, no. 1, 2015, pp. 141–62

‘How Repertoires Evolve: The Diffusion of Suicide Protest in the Twentieth Century’, Mobilization, vol. 18, no. 4 (Frontiers in Social Movement Methodology), 2013, pp. 407–28

(with Raheel Dhattiwala) ‘The Political Logic of Ethnic Violence: The Anti-Muslim Pogrom in Gujarat, 2002’, Politics and Society, vol. 40, no. 4, 2012, pp. 481–514

‘Explaining Membership in the British National Party: A Multilevel Analysis of Contact and Threat’ (with Steven Knauss), European Sociological Review, vol. 28, no. 5, 2012, pp. 633–46

‘From Protest to Organization: The Impact of the 1960 Sit-Ins on Movement Organizations in the American South’ (with Kenneth T. Andrews), The Diffusion of Social Movements: Actors, Frames, and Political Effects, ed. Rebecca Kolins Givan, Sarah A. Soule, and Kenneth M. Roberts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 187–203

‘Self-Fulfilling Prophecies’The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology, ed. Peter Bearman and Peter Hedström, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 294–314

‘Who Joined the Sit-ins and Why: Southern Black Students in the early 1960s’, Mobilization, vol. 11, no. 3, 2006, pp. 241–56

(with Kenneth T. Andrews) ‘The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: Movement Organizations, Social Networks, and News Media in the 1960 Sit-Ins’, American Sociological Review, vol. 71, no. 5, 2006, pp. 752–77

‘Dying without Killing: Self-Immolations, 1963–2002’, Making Sense of Suicide Missions, ed. Diego Gambetta, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 (revised paperback ed. 2006), pp. 173–208, 320–24; Spanish translation: ‘Morir sin matar: las autoinmolaciones, 1963–2002’, El sentido de las misiones suicidas, Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009

‘Strikes as Forest Fires: Chicago and Paris in the Late 19th Century’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 110, no. 6, 2005, pp. 1684–1714

‘Positive Feedback in Collective Mobilization: The American Strike Wave of 1886’, Theory and Society, vol. 32, no. 2, 2003, pp. 217–54

‘Strikes as Sequences of Interaction: The American Strike Wave of 1886’, Social Science History, vol. 26, no. 3, 2002, pp. 583–617—awarded biennial prize for the best article by a graduate student published in Social Science History

‘Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State Formation’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 41, no. 2, 1999, pp. 374–411



’How Protesting Depends on Peers: U.S. Students in the Late 1960s’

‘When Costs are Benefits: Communicative Suffering as Political Protest’



‘The ONS Finally Admits to Flawed Trans Population Statistics’, Spectator, 15 September 2024

‘How I Took on the Puberty Blocker Orthodoxy—and Won’, Sunday Telegraph, 17 March 2024

‘Why does the Census Say There Are More Trans People in Newham than Brighton?’, Spectator, 9 April 2023

‘Free speech at Oxford: Do Women Have the Right to Defend Their Sex?’, Oxford Magazine, no. 416, second week of Hilary Term, 2020, pp. 14–16

‘How Feminism Paved the Way for Transgenderism’, Quillette, 1 August 2019

(with Susan Matthews) ‘A Disappearing Man’, Oxford Magazine, no. 406, eighth week of Hilary Term, 2019, pp. 21–22

‘Research evidence: Gender-Atypical Tots Likely to Become Gay or Lesbian’, 4thWaveNow, 7 August 2018

‘The Open Society Foundations and the Transgender Movement’, 4thWaveNow, 25 May 2018

(with Kenneth T. Andrews) ‘Sit-ins and Desegregation in the U.S. South in the Early 1960s’, ICPSR 35630, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2015

(with Neil Ketchley) ‘Who Actually Died in Egypt’s Rabaa Massacre’, Washington Post Monkey Cage Blog, 14 August 2015

(with Neil Ketchley) ‘What Is the Egyptian Anti-Coup Movement Protesting for?’, Washington Post Monkey Cage Blog, 4 April 2014

‘Self-Immolation in Context, 1963-2012’, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 25, 2012, pp. 143–50

‘Prophecy, Self-Fulfilling/Self-Defeating’, Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences, ed. Byron Kaldis, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2013, vol. 2, pp. 765–66

‘Storm in a Teacup? A Comment on Ullmann-Margalit’, Norms and Values: The Role of Social Norms as Instruments of Value Realisation, ed. Michael Baurmann, Geoffrey Brennan, Bob Goodin, and Nicholas Southwood, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2010, pp. 143–48

‘Dying for a Cause—Alone?’, Contexts, vol. 7, no. 2, 2008, pp. 22–27

‘A Century of American Exceptionalism: Review Essay on Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in The United States’, Thesis 11, no. 68, 2002, pp. 110–21

Contributor to New Zealand Historical Atlas, ed. Malcolm McKinnon, Wellington: David Bateman in association with Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1997

Kevin Hince, with Kerry Taylor, Jacqui Peace, and Michael Biggs, Opening Hours: History of the Wellington Shop Employees Union, Wellington: Wellington Shop Employees Union, 1990



Review of Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire, Oxford Magazine, no. 415, noughth week of Hilary Term, 2020, pp. 9–10

Review of Heather Brunskell-Evans and Michele Moore (eds), Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body, Oxford Magazine, no. 396, second week of Trinity Term, 2018, pp. 25–26

Review of Emily Beaulieu, Electoral Protest and Democracy in the Developing World, Mobilization, vol. 21, no. 1, 2016, pp. 137–38

Review of Matthew Lange, Educations in Ethnic Violence: Identity, Educational Bubbles, and Resource Mobilization, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 64, no. 1, 2013, pp. 184–85

Review of Matthias Reiss (ed.), The Street as Stage: Protest Marches and Public Rallies since the Nineteenth Century, Cultural and Social History, vol. 6, no. 2, 2009, pp. 250–52

Review of Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 113, no. 2, 2007, pp. 558–60

Review of Marek M. Kaminski, Games Prisoners Play: The Tragicomic Worlds of Polish Prison, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 110, no. 6, 2005, pp. 1820–22

Review of Maryjane Osa, Solidarity and Contention: Networks of Polish Opposition, Social Forces, vol. 83, no. 1, 2004, pp. 447–49

Review of Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870, Contemporary Sociology, vol. 33, no. 4, 2004, pp. 467–69

Review of James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 44, no. 4, 2002, pp. 852–54

Review of Stephen K. Sanderson, Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development, Contemporary Sociology, vol. 26, no. 1, 1997, pp. 47–48


Michael Biggs, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford