Brandon R. Byrd

Associate Professor of History and African American and Diaspora Studies
Chancellor Faculty Fellow

I am historian of Black intellectual and social history, with a special focus on the United States and Haiti. I am the author of The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) and a co-editor of Ideas in Unexpected Places: Reimagining Black Intellectual History (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2022) and Haiti for the Haitians by Louis-Joseph Janvier (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2023). 

Along with these publications, my scholarship has appeared in numerous journals including Slavery & Abolition, The Journal of African American History, The Journal of Haitian Studies, Modern Intellectual History, The Journal of the Civil War Era, and Diplomatic History as well as popular outlets including GQ, and ESPN’s Andscape 

Currently, I am completing a biography of the U.S. Black emigrationist Benjamin “Pap” Singleton. 

In addition to my research and teaching, I am a co-editor of Modern Intellectual History and a co-editor of the Black Lives and Liberation series published by Vanderbilt University Press.