Kimberly V Jones is a graduate candidate at Rice University.  Her research focuses on histories of the Afro-Atlantic world, the gendered identities of Black women, and African American history.

Kimberly’s current project considers the relationship(s) between slavery, capitalism, and disability as a critical debate in Early American Republic scholarship. Her dissertation, “Critical Bodies:  Slavery, Gender and Disability in Early Republic Virginia” argues that slave law was a vertex for white aspiration and Black resistance. In adding disability and racial capitalist frameworks she reveals strategies to employ capitalist extraction of disabled enslaved people’s bodies and most importantly, the efforts of slaves and ‘fit’ or disabled to constitute community and provide support to their kin despite the trauma of slavery. Her research is supported by Citizens and Scholars through the Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Fellowship for 2022 and the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

Kimberly has four post-secondary degrees in History and Economics. She has been involved in building academic and intellectual communities at Rice as well as lending her leadership abilities to on-campus associations. In her time at Rice, she served as Secretary of the Humanities Graduate Student Association and Black Graduate Student Association, President of the Humanities Graduate Student Association, Chair of the Teaching and Professional Development Committee for Humanities Graduate Students, Program Coordinator for the Department of History Graduate Student Professional Development Colloquia, and member of the steering committee for Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice.  In addition, she has served on numerous other executive boards and associations as well as created intellectual colloquia at Rice. The Black Feminist Reading Lab and Center for African and African American Study Black Thought Reading Lab have both been successful endeavors.

Kimberly continues her work with public history by participating in distance lectures as a moderator or host. She is also a program manager for a podcast entitled Medicine Race and Democracy, where she invites and holds interviews with activists and scholars. Kimberly is also an editorial assistant for the Journal of Southern History.