A Kansas University alumna who was named a 2014 MacArthur “genius” will return to campus to give the annual February Sisters lecture this week.

Sarah Deer will present “Sovereignty of the Soul: Native Feminism and Violent Crime” at 3 p.m. Thursday at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. Her lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow in the Malott Room.

A national leader in the effort to protect Native women from gender violence, Deer is a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law and a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. She has documented a history of inadequate protection for victims of physical and sexual abuse in Indian country, worked with grass-roots and national organizations to reform federal policies that hinder the ability of tribes to prosecute offenders, and was instrumental in the passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 and the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

Deer earned a bachelor’s in women’s studies and philosophy from KU in 1995 and a law degree from the KU School of Law in 1999.

Often called “genius grants,” MacArthur Fellowships were given to 21 people in 2014, and they will receive no-strings-attached stipends of $625,000 over five years.