Kim Welch

Kim Welch is an Associate Professor of History and Law at Vanderbilt University, specializing in slavery, race, and legal systems in the early U.S. South and Atlantic World. Her groundbreaking book, Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South (2018), has earned multiple accolades, including awards from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and the Dan David Prize (2022). Her research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and fellowships from leading institutions like the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Her work focuses on marginalized voices in legal history, particularly those of free people of color navigating discriminatory laws in the 19th-century South. Current projects examine how estate and marriage laws impacted intergenerational wealth among Black Americans in New Orleans, Santiago de Cuba, and Paris. Welch also explores intersections of race, jurisprudence, and economic inequality in Atlantic societies.

• Prize from Society for Historians of the Early American Republic
• Prize from American Society for Legal History
• Dan David Prize laureate (2022)
• Fellowship from American Council of Learned Societies

Widely recognized for her interdisciplinary scholarship, Welch combines historical analysis with legal studies to illuminate systemic inequities in early American and transnational contexts.