Cory James Young is a scholar of abolition and slavery in the American North whose research engages African American, early United States, and legal histories. Trained as a social historian, he is interested in how historically marginalized people effected change in their communities.

Dr. Young earned a BA in history from the State University of New York, College at Geneseo. He earned a PhD in history at Georgetown University. In 2022, he won the Best Dissertation Prize from the Society for the History of the Early American Republic. His research has been supported by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Library Company of Philadelphia, and McNeil Center for Early American Studies, among other institutions. As postdoctoral research associate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he was responsible for managing Katrina Jagodinsky’s digital history project, “Petitioning for Freedom: Habeas Corpus in the American West, 1812-1924."