Robin D. G. Kelley

Robin Kelley
Robin Kelley in Oxford, 2010.
Born	Robin Davis Gibran Kelley (1962-03-14) March 14, 1962 (age 55) New York City, New York
Nationality	American
Alma mater	California State University, Long Beach; University of California, Los Angeles
Genre	History
Notable works	Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
Spouse	Lisa Gay Hamilton

Robin Davis Gibran Kelley (born March 14, 1962) is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. From 2006 to 2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California (USC), and from 2003 to 2006 he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia University. From 1994 to 2003, he was a professor of history and Africana Studies at New York University (NYU) as well the chairman of NYU's history department from 2002 to 2003. Robin Kelley has also served as a Hess Scholar-in-Residence at Brooklyn College. In the summer of 2000, Dr. Kelley was honored as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, where he taught and mentored a class of sophomores, as well as wrote the majority of the book Freedom Dreams. During the academic year 2009–10, Kelley held the Harmsworth Chair of American History at Oxford University, the first African-American historian to do so since the chair was established in 1922. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014.

Born in New York City, Robin Kelley earned his Bachelor's degree from California State University, Long Beach, in 1983. By 1987 he had earned his Master's in African history and doctorate in US history from UCLA.

After earning his doctorate, he began his career as an Assistant Professor at Southeastern Massachusetts University, then to Emory University, and the University of Michigan, where he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. He later moved to the Department of History at New York University, where he was promoted to the rank of Professor and taught courses on U.S. history, African-American history, and popular culture. At the age of 32, he was the youngest full professor at NYU. He is an honorary fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.