Amrita Chakrabarti Myers earned her doctorate in US History from Rutgers University, specializing in African American History and Women’s History. A historian of Black Women, her research interrogates power, privilege, citizenship, and freedom in the Old South.

Myers has been the recipient of several awards for her scholarship, including a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies; the 2012 Julia Cherry Spruill Book Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians; and the 2011 Anna Julia Cooper-C.L.R. James Book Prize from the National Council for Black Studies.

In addition to her scholarly work, Myers is regularly interviewed by the media about racial justice matters. She has appeared on outlets as varied as PBS NewsHour and Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” For several years she helped to co-anchor Indiana’s award-winning African American radio show, “Bring It On!” and she’s written op-eds for and been interviewed by various publications including the Bloomington Herald-Times, the Indianapolis Star, the Los Angeles Times, the Louisville Courier-Journal, and The Washington Post.

Her first book, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston, was published by UNC Press in 2011 and was the recipient of four book prizes. Myers’ second monograph, The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn, was released by UNC/Ferris & Ferris Books in late 2023. It won the 2024 Publication Award from the Kentucky Historical Society, was shortlisted for the 2024 Stone Book Award by the National Museum of African American History and received an honorable mention for the 2024 Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians.

For AY 2025-26, Myers is a visiting scholar in the History Department at Georgia State University and a fellow at the GSU Humanities Research Center. She is the Ruth N. Halls Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington.