Zach Sell is assistant professor of Africana studies and affiliated faculty with the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience. He has been a faculty fellow of the Kellogg Institute since 2026.
A historian of slavery with an emphasis upon colonialism and capitalism in the nineteenth century, Sell is the author of the award-winning book Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital (UNC Press, 2021), which examines how US slavery intersected with British colonial projects ranging from Australia, Belize, and India. His work also has appeared in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, International Labor and Working-Class History, and Salvage.
Sell also is engaged in collaborative public humanities scholarship. Previously at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ), there he coordinated a collaboration between Firelight Films and CSSJ in support of a PBS documentary film series on the Atlantic slave trade directed by Stanley Nelson.
He holds a PhD in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.