Sherri L. Burr

Sherri L. Burr is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and the Yale Law School. At the University of New Mexico, she became the Dickason Chair and Regents Professor of Law Emerita in 2017 following her retirement from an approximately 30-year career as a full-time law professor.

Burr is the prolific author or co-author of over 30 law, business, and history books. Her "Complicated Lives: Free Blacks in Virginia, 1619-1865" (Carolina Academic Press, 2019) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History. Her first memoir, "Living with Nephew: How I Got Voted the Meanest Parent in the World," was published by RMK Publications in 2026.

Burr has won numerous awards as an author, lecturer, and television producer. In 2025, she received the Parris Award from Southwest Writers, the organization’s highest honor for a published writer who has contributed substantially to the organization and to advance other writers. In 2024, she was selected as the inaugural Black Women United for Action Fellow at the George Washington Presidential Library to work on her next history book. Mount Holyoke College presented to her its Alumni Achievement Award in 2022. In 2021, she was proclaimed the National Federation Communicator of Achievement.

Burr’s philanthropy includes establishing and growing the Ola Mae Burr Peete Scholarship for a Single-Parent Nursing student, the Elizabeth Agbi Warrior for Justice Scholarship, and the Sherri Burr Family Law Scholarship. The first two were set up at the University of New Mexico and the third one at Yale Law School. She serves as a Vice-President of the Aaron Burr Association and member of both the Authors Guild Foundation and Albuquerque Museum Boards of Trustees.

Her hobbies include golfing and cooking tossed in with occasional doses of horseback riding and kayaking.