Historian of Germany and the Atlantic World

I'm Kelly Kaelin, Assistant Professor of History and Gender Studies at the University of Southern Indiana.

I'm a scholar of Germany and the Atlantic world and am particularly interested in women, religion, and slavery in the German diaspora. My research focuses largely on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century - meaning I straddle early modern and modern. I'm currently working on a book manuscript and have a couple other articles in process. I also bring these themes into my classroom, where I've designed courses on German unification, people of Vast Early America, and religious separatism in the Atlantic world.

Born and raised in central Virginia, I attended Washington and Lee University and then moved north to Pennsylvania for graduate school. I defended my PhD at Penn State in May 2022 and immediately headed to Indiana to start my position as an assistant professor at USI.

In 2021, I was a US Fulbright Scholar to Germany, where I studied as a guest researcher at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel, Niedersachsen. My research and travel has also been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. I love that my research gives me the opportunity to travel the world and see new places, but I always look forward to returning to Germany.

In my free time, you'll find me cooking, knitting, running, and renovating my home that I share with my husband, cat, and dog.