Benjamin Madley

Benjamin Madley is an Associate Professor of History at UCLA specializing in Native American history, colonialism, and genocide studies. He holds affiliations with the Department of History, School of Letters and Science, and previously served as Visiting Professor of Indigenous Law at UC Hastings College of the Law during 2023-2024.

• PhD in History from Yale University (2009)
• M.Phil/M.A. from Yale (2005)
• M.Stud from Oxford (1995)
• B.A. from Yale (1994)

His research focuses on colonial violence against Indigenous peoples in North America, Australia, and Africa. Major works include An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe (2016) and co-editing The Cambridge World History of Genocide (2023). His scholarship employs transnational comparisons to analyze genocide mechanisms and colonial policies.

Madley has held fellowships at the Huntington Library and Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. His articles appear in leading journals including American Historical Review, Journal of Genocide Research, and Pacific Historical Review.

Current research explores Pacific Islanders' experiences during the California Gold Rush and redefining unfree labor systems in colonial contexts. He advocates for methodological rigor in genocide studies through comparative frameworks.