Andrew Kahrl

Andrew Kahrl is a Professor in the Department of History and affiliated faculty in African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences. His research examines the intersections of race, property, and environmental justice in American urban and coastal landscapes, with particular focus on historical mechanisms of racial dispossession and inequality.

Education:

• Ph.D. in History, Indiana University (2008)
• B.A. in History, Kenyon College (2001)

Professor Kahrl specializes in the history of race and inequality in housing, real estate, and local tax policy, alongside the social and environmental history of beaches, outdoor recreation, and coastal development. His work reveals how racial capitalism shaped American cities and shorelines through predatory tax practices, beach privatization, and discriminatory land use policies. He demonstrates how environmental access became a battleground for civil rights, particularly in coastal regions where public spaces were systematically exclusionary.

His scholarly output from 2008-2020 shows consistent engagement with structural inequality, analyzing tax delinquency sales as dignity takings, coastal real estate as creative destruction, and public beaches as contested racial spaces. His interdisciplinary approach bridges historical methods with urban studies, environmental justice frameworks, and critical race theory to expose enduring patterns of racialized wealth extraction.

Scientific Awards:

• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (Jan.-June 2022)
• 2013 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award (Organization of American Historians)
• Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship (ACLS)
• Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellowship (Harvard)
• Recent Doctoral Recipients Fellowship (Mellon/ACLS)
• Dissertation Completion Fellowship (Mellon/ACLS)
• 2007 Louis Pelzer Memorial Award (OAH)

Professor Kahrl teaches courses including African American History (1865-Present), Race and Real Estate in the US, Urban History, and modern US History. His research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Park Service, for which he served as Principal Investigator on the African American Outdoor Recreation Theme Study. While specific advising details aren't provided, his work has significantly influenced scholarship on racial inequality in property systems.

No dedicated labs or research teams are mentioned in available materials, though his National Park Service study represents significant collaborative research infrastructure.