Deirdre Cooper Owens was born to a National Archives and Records Administration employee father and a genealogist mother and raised in Anacostia, a neighborhood in southeastern Washington D.C.[1][2] Descending from South Carolina Lowcountry Gullahs on both her parents' sides,[1] she learned Gullah-language stories from her grandfather as a young child.
[3] She also directed the Library Company of Philadelphia's program in African-American history.
[4] In 2023, she moved to the University of Connecticut's Department of History and the Africana Studies Institute and became an associate professor there.
[1] In 2017, she published Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, a book on the exploitation of Black women in 19th-century gynecology;[3] she won the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Award for said book.
[6] Cooper Owens is an advocate for reproductive justice, having worked with organizations in combating Black maternal mortality in the United States.