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).

Along with these publications, my scholarship has appeared in journals such as Slavery & Abolition, The Journal of African American History, The Journal of Haitian Studies, Modern Intellectual History, and Diplomatic History as well as popular outlets including GQ, and ESPN’s The Undefeated.

Currently, I am completing several research projects including a critical translation of the Haitian intellectual Louis Joseph Janvier and 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