Jennie K. Williams, PhD.
Academic Trajectory
Completion of Bachelor’s Degree in History with Highest Honors at the University of Virginia: 2008-2012.
[Various internships & employment (primarily in the non-profit sector) in Washington, D.C.: 2012-2015.]
Doctoral studies in history at Johns Hopkins University: August 2015 - December 2020.
Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Santa Cruz: January 2021 - January 2022
Adjunct Professor in the Department of History at Wofford College: January 2022 - May 2022
Postdoctoral Research Fellow & Lecturer at the University of Virginia, July 2022 - July 2025
Research Overview
Jennie K. Williams, Ph.D. is a historian with expertise in American slavery and the domestic slave trade, digital methodologies, data and data ethics. Her book, Oceans of Kinfolk: the Coastwise Traffic of Enslaved Persons to New Orleans, 1820-1860, is forthcoming from UNC Press.
Datawork: Oceans of Kinfolk & Louisiana Kindred
Dr. Williams is the author of the Oceans of Kinfolk database, which includes the names of more than 63,000 enslaved men, women and children trafficked to New Orleans from domestic ports between 1818 and 1860. The first edition of Oceans of Kinfolk was published at SlaveVoyages.org in December of 2021. Dr. Williams is currently revising that edition: a process involving careful, manual review of every single record for transcription accuracy. Once each record is reviewed, she adds it to the Second Edition of Oceans of Kinfolk @ Kinfolkology. Throughout this process, the unrevised 2021 version of the database will still be available here.
Hundreds of thousands of enslaved men, women and children were bought and sold in Louisiana before the Civil War. Their names have remained secreted away in notarial archives ever since. Dr. Williams is the Lead Author and Editor in Chief of Louisiana Kindred, a developing database of enslaved individuals sold in antebellum New Orleans.
Kinfolkology
In April of 2023, Eola Lewis Dance and Dr. Jennie K. Williams, Ph.D. co-founded Kinfolkology with a vision for integrating datawork related to slavery and the lives of the enslaved with the engagement of Descendant communities. Kinfolkology is guided by an understanding that while enslaved ancestors are no longer living, they were and are part of communities and families that are very much alive.
Co-Editor, Slave Voyages (2021-2023)
Dr. Williams initially joined the Slave Voyages team in at the start of a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California-Santa Cruz (January 2021—January 2022). After overseeing the integration of the first edition of Oceans of Kinfolk into the Slave Voyages site, she continued in the role of Co-Editor until June of 2023 when she departed from Slave Voyages in order to co-found Kinfolkology along with Eola Lewis Dance.
Teaching
Data & History—Problems & Possibilities: Fall 2022 - Spring 2025. As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow & Lecturer in the Engagements at UVA, I designed and taught a course exploring the history of American slavery through the lens of data. The course also considered the concept of data itself as it relates to method, memory, and ethics. Please see my course website for more information.
Western Civilization: Wofford College, spring semester of 2022.
The History of the Domestic Traffic of Enslaved Persons in Antebellum America: Johns Hopkins University, 2018.
Publications
Jennie K. Williams, Oceans of Kinfolk: the Maritime Traffic of Enslaved People in Antebellum America, forthcoming from UNC Press.
Williams, Jennie K. “Finders Aren’t Keepers: Rethinking and Reconfiguring the Oceans of Kinfolk Database.” Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 4, no. 3 (2023): 44-61. https://doi.org/10.25971/p79h-e857.
Williams, Jennie K. "The Coastwise Traffic to New Orleans Dataset: Documenting North American Voyages in the IASTD." Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 4, no. 2 (2023): 27-34. https://doi.org/10.25971/bpz3-0f38.
Jennie Williams, American Slavery at Sea: Complexities of the Coastwise Traffic. Echoes: The SlaveVoyages Blog - American Slavery at Sea. March 16, 2023.
Jennie Williams and Janelle S. Peifer, “White Scholars and Black Spaces,” Diverse: Issues in Higher Ed, June 7, 2022.
Jennie K. Williams (2020) Trouble the water: The Baltimore to New Orleans coastwise slave trade, 1820–1860, Slavery & Abolition, 41:2, 275-303, DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2019.1660509
Jennie Williams, “JHU, too, must atone for its slavery connection,” The Baltimore Sun, February 15, 2018.
Grants & Awards
ACLS Digital Extension Grant: (2020): Awarded for the Expansion of the Intra-American Slave Trade Database.
Deans Teaching Fellowship Award, Johns Hopkins University (2020)
Press
Daniella Raz, “Family Separation Among American Slaves was Shockingly Common,” The Economist, June 17, 2022.
Amy Davis, “Seeing the Unseen: A somber tour through one of Baltimore’s ugliest chapters of enslavement,” Baltimore Sun, May 5, 2022.
Jamelle Bouie, “We Still Can’t See Slavery for What It Was,” New York Times, January 28, 2022.
Presentations, Conferences & Talks
Kinfolkology x Community: Richmond, VA. September 22, 2024.
“Hopkins Alums Take on Hard Histories,” Johns Hopkins University (virtual), April 19, 2024.
“Historical Data & Genealogical Research,” Afro-American Genealogical and Historical Society of Chicago, February 11, 2024.
“Enslaved Data & Descendant Engagement,” Houston Museum of African American Culture (Houston, TX), February 3, 2024.
“Changing Leadership” (panel), Johns Hopkins University, September 13, 2023.
“Genealogical Research and Domestic Slave Trade”, African American Genealogical Group, Philadelphia, PA, February 2022.
“Black Life, Data and Louisiana,” Bound Away: a Conference on Voyages of Enslavement in the Americas, Rice University, December 2021.
“A Conversation with Jennie Williams and Tony Perry,” Hard Histories Book Talks with Martha S. Jones, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, April 2021.
“Unsiloing Digital Resources in Pursuit of Narratives of Enslaved Lives,” The Organization of American Historians Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, April 2019.
“‘Rough Passages’ on ‘Tremendous Seas’: Maryland and the Domestic Slave Trade,” The Homewood Museum, Baltimore, MD, June 2018.
“Final Passages, Part 2: New Perspectives on the Intra-American Slave Trading Routes,” The American Historical Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., January 2018.
Historian • Author: Oceans of Kinfolk • Co-Founder: Kinfolkology