Dr. Chelsea D. McNutt is an American historian specializing in Black women’s political labor, civil rights activism, and twentieth-century U.S. history. Beginning August 2026, she will serve as Assistant Professor of History (Tenure-Track) at Grambling State University.

Dr. McNutt earned her PhD in History from Cornell University, where she was recognized as a Graduate School Dean’s Scholar. Her cutting-edge research examines localized gendered agency, the infrastructure of care work, and the foundational political organizing executed by Black women within local NAACP branches during the Civil Rights Movement. Her scholarship has received prestigious national recognition, including induction into the Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society, selection as the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellow by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and a Short-Term Research Fellowship from the Frances S. Summersell Center for the study of the South at the University of Alabama.

As an active public intellectual, Dr. McNutt’s research commands an expanding global platform, engaging audiences through scholarly forums and institutions including the University of Luxembourg, the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (Netherlands), the University of London, and the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès. Her work bridges international scholarly exchange and public engagement, using history as a lens through which to examine the challenges and possibilities of contemporary society.