Kimba Stahler is a Humanities Without Walls postdoctoral fellow at the Humanities Institute at Penn State University. She is a historian of United States women and gender and social justice movements history who specializes in twentieth century antipoverty and feminist movements. She earned her Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in 2024. Her research interests include grassroots activists and organizations, multiracial alliances and coalition-building, and participatory democracy.

Stahler’s book manuscript, tentatively titled Rats in Common: The Untold History of Cleveland’s Multiracial Welfare Rights Movement, is based on her dissertation, entitled “United by the Right to Welfare: Participatory Democracy and Productive Alliances in Cleveland’s Interracial Movement of the Poor, 1960-1975.” For that dissertation, she conducted oral histories to uncover how members of the Students for a Democratic Society living in Cleveland constructed that organization’s most successful interracial grassroots organizing campaign. She produced a story-telling podcast, “Visions of Democracy,” using those oral histories. Each of its eight episodes encourages listeners to think critically about the various forms that democratic participation takes. Her research projects have been supported by numerous fellowships, including a Social Justice Fellowship and John A. Peters Fellowship. Stahler has presented her research at leading national conferences, including the American Historical Association, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Annual Meeting, and the Urban History Association.