Karen Folger Jacobs (born October 28, 1940) is an American writer and sociologist. She graduated from Antioch College in 1963 and Boston University in 1984 before earning a Ph.D. in Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where she later served on the faculty. Jacobs received four Fulbright awards to teach in colleges in Pakistan and India and has lectured in Europe for UC Berkeley. A licensed therapist, she is known for her socially engaged work and multi-cultural focus. She collaborated with photographer Mary Ellen Mark on the seminal book 'Ward 81' (1979), where she spent thirty-six days living at Oregon State Hospital to interview and document the lives of women in a high-security psychiatric ward.[1,2,3]
