Kellen R. Funk

Kellen R. Funk serves as the Michael E. Patterson Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he has been a faculty member since 2018. He is a verified Data Science Institute (DSI) Member with affiliations at the Center for Data, Media and Society and the Computational Social Science Committee, reflecting his interdisciplinary approach to legal scholarship.

Funk completed his Ph.D. in American history at Princeton University as a Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellow, one of the university's highest honors for graduate students.

• Ph.D., American History, Princeton University (Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellow)

A leading legal historian, Funk specializes in civil procedure, remedies, and the historical evolution of the American bail system. His research innovatively merges historical methodology with data science, exemplified by his project digitizing 19th-century civil case filings from New York County. He also investigates religious frameworks in legal codification and juridical practices of religious communities, revealing connections between theology and American law.

His scholarly output (2009-2025) demonstrates consistent focus on historical foundations of modern legal structures, particularly procedural justice and equity jurisprudence. Recent works increasingly employ computational text analysis to examine legislative borrowing patterns and civil procedure evolution, establishing him at the forefront of digital legal history.

Funk's academic distinctions include:

• Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, Princeton University

While specific advisee details are unprovided, his collaborative projects like the 19th-century case digitization initiative with Lincoln Mullen indicate active research mentorship. His work has received institutional support through Columbia's Data Science Institute and Computational Social Science Committee affiliations.

He co-leads a major digital humanities project analyzing historical legal texts and is a core contributor to Columbia's Computational Social Science Committee, bridging traditional legal scholarship with computational methodologies to transform historical legal research.