Kim E. Nielsen is Distinguished Professor of Disability Studies and History at the University of Toledo (Ohio). Her scholarship explores gender, disability, law, and citizenship.

Professor Nielsen is a widely recognized scholar of disability history. She is author of the widely used A Disability History of the United States and co-editor of the twice award-winning Oxford Handbook of Disability History. In addition, she served as founding president of the Disability History Association and co-edits the Disability Histories book series at the University of Illinois Press.  Furthermore, Professor Nielsen has expertise regarding Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan Macy, and biography. She is author of The Radical Lives of Helen Keller, Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller; and edited Helen Keller: Selected Writings. As a Keller expert, Professor Nielsen has appeared on Radio Lab: The Helen Keller Exorcism (2022), Becoming Helen Keller (PBS, 2021), and Icons (BBS, 2019). From 2015-2018, Nielsen co-edited the journal Disability Studies Quarterly.  Nielsen’s most recent book, Money, Marriage, and Madness: The Life of Anna Ott, analyzes a mid-19^th century physician institutionalized for two decades at a Wisconsin insane asylum. She speaks frequently and around the globe on issues of disability and history.

Professor Nielsen is the recipient of two Fulbright appointments, the A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize of the Southern Association of Women Historians, numerous teaching recognitions, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. In the last years she has received fellowships from Harvard’s Houghton Library, the American Philosophical Society, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Iowa.