Leila Blackbird

Leila K. Blackbird (LA Kréyòl, unenrolled adoptee) is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Chicago and has acted as the Pozen Human Rights Doctoral Fellowship Coordinator since 2020. Additionally, she is a founding member and currently serves as Senior Research Editor for Keywords for Black Louisiana, an NHPRC-funded project at Johns Hopkins University, PI: Jessica Marie Johnson. 

Leila is a sociolegal scholar, critical digital humanist, and historian of settler colonialism, slavery, and state violence. Her work centers the histories and lived experiences of the Black and Indigenous peoples of the Gulf South and has been featured in books such as Louisiana Creole Peoplehood and What is History, Now? and in the academic journals Eighteenth-Century Studies, The William & Mary Quarterly, and Scholarly Editing. Leila holds a Dual BA in History & Psychology and an MA in Global History from the University of New Orleans, as well as an AM in US & Atlantic History from the University of Chicago.