Kendra Field

Dr. Kendra Taira Field is an Associate Professor of History at Tufts University and a leading scholar in African American and Afro-Native experiences. She is Director of the Center for Public History and co-founder of the Du Bois Forum and African American Trail Project. Her research focuses on family history, genealogy, and racial justice in the post-slavery United States.

• PhD in American History, New York University (2010)
• Master's in Public Policy, Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government (2002)
• B.A. in History, Williams College (1999)

Field’s work bridges personal and collective narratives, emphasizing intergenerational memory and the legacy of slavery. Her current book project, The Stories We Tell (W.W. Norton), explores African American genealogy and storytelling from the Middle Passage to the present, supported by a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant.

Her scholarly contributions have been recognized with prestigious awards, including the 2025-26 Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellowship and the 2022 NAACP W.E.B. Du Bois Freedom Fund Award. She has also received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Harvard University's Charles Warren Center in American History.

Field’s public history initiatives include co-founding the Du Bois Forum, a retreat and fellowship for Black intellectuals, and leading the 10 Million Names Project to recover identities of enslaved African Americans. She has advised major documentaries such as Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre (2021) and Breaking New Ground (HBO Max, 2023).