Mike Jirik

Mike Jirik serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of Missouri, specializing in Black historical scholarship and transnational Africana intellectual frameworks across North America and the Atlantic World.

His research critically examines:

• The entanglement of slavery with university foundations and operations
• Abolitionist movements and their intellectual legacies
• The institutional evolution of Black Studies as an academic discipline
• Reconstruction-era political transformations
• Continuities in Black liberation struggles

His interdisciplinary methodology bridges historical analysis with critical race theory.

Dr. Jirik's scholarly output appears in leading journals including Slavery & Abolition, Journal of American Studies, History of Education Quarterly, and Journal of Interdisciplinary History, with commentary featured on the Black Perspectives blog.

Research funding has been secured through competitive grants from:

• W.E.B. Du Bois Center (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
• American Antiquarian Society
• Organization of American Historians
• Massachusetts Historical Society
• Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History (Harvard University)