Katherine Sorrels

Katherine Sorrels is a Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati, where she also serves as Affiliate Faculty in Judaic Studies and formerly chaired the Taft Health Humanities Research Group. She specializes in modern European and North American history of medicine, disability studies, and Jewish experience, with a particular focus on Holocaust studies, scientific racism, and eugenics.

Her research interests center on the intersections of medical history, disability, and Jewish experience, particularly examining how Austrian Jewish refugees transformed approaches to disability after the Holocaust. She is currently completing her book On the Spectrum: Refugees from Nazi Austria and the Politics of Disability and Belonging in Britain and America, which explores the Camphill movement founded by Austrian Jewish refugees in Scotland during WWII. Her previous book, Cosmopolitan Outsiders: Imperial Inclusion, National Exclusion, and the Pan-European Idea, 1900-1930 (2016), examined Jewish intellectuals' contributions to early European unity movements.

Her scholarly output reveals consistent engagement with disability history, Jewish studies, and medical humanities, with recent publications including co-edited volumes Disability in German-Speaking Europe: History, Memory, Culture (2022) and Ohio under COVID: Lessons from America's Heartland in Crisis (2023). Her digital humanities project Disability and Belonging uses ArcGIS StoryMaps to explore debates about living arrangements for people with intellectual disabilities.

• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2024-2025)
• Gene Lewis Faculty Teaching Prize (2021)
• Award for Innovative Uses of Technology in Teaching (2019)
• Public Humanities Award from Charles Phelps Taft Research Center (2020)
• TOME Award for open access monograph ecosystem (2021)

Sorrels actively mentors graduate students in history, with numerous MA and PhD advisees working on topics related to medical history, disability studies, Jewish history, and migration. She has secured significant research funding including multiple NEH fellowships, Taft Center fellowships, and Botstiber Foundation grants. Her community partnerships include work with Cincinnati's Holocaust and Humanity Center and Harriet Beecher Stowe House on historic garden restoration. She also leads the Stowe Garden project to restore the historic landscape around the Harriet Beecher Stowe House as an educational greenspace.