Research Spotlight: Kimba Stahler

Public History, Public Resources, and Participatory Democracy

As a social and political historian of the 20th-century United States, Kimba Stahler is a student of participatory democracy, economic justice movements, the interplay of race and class in American feminisms, welfare policy and programming, and more. She is committed to public-facing scholarship and research that is accessible to and inclusive of audiences beyond university walls. Stahler’s multifaceted research interests and projects all flow from one central question: how do ordinary Americans conceptualize democracy?

The pursuit of such a question necessitates community-oriented research methodologies, making the Humanities Without Walls postdoctoral fellowship at Penn State University the perfect next step for Stahler after earning her PhD at Case Western Reserve University in 2024. “I have zero interest in being confined to an ivory tower,” she said, reflecting on her motivations in applying for the HWW position. “Even just the name, ‘without walls,’ perfectly encapsulates my desire to have no border between campus and community.”

Coming into the fellowship, Stahler was eager to continue the work she began during her PhD. Her current book project examines women experiencing poverty in Cleveland during the postwar WWII period and draws on original oral history interviews and grassroots organizational records.

 Summarizing the primary themes of the book, Stahler explained her central argument. “White and Black women on welfare had a far more radical interpretation of democracy than has previously been recognized,” she said. “It’s this radical conception of democracy that best explains why their multiracial alliance proved effective and enduring at a time when other coalitions were crumbling under the weight of racism.”

Following the narrative of a group of Black and white women who coalesced in Cleveland and their desire to democratize the welfare state, Stahler examines the ways in which women on welfare advocated for increased payments and better programs but were ultimately working toward the larger goal of having influence over the political decisions that impacted their daily lives. This definition of democracy, rooted in community and neighborhood control— also called participatory democracy— is the philosophy that drove these women to, as Stahler said, “find ways to balance their different needs, the different causes and solutions to white and Black poverty, so that they could work together and make sure both groups could address their unique needs without overpowering one another internally.” The book, titled Welfare of, by, and for the Poor: Participatory Democracy in Cleveland’s Multiracial Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1975, is currently under review.

Heading into 2026, Stahler is turning her focus toward season two of her podcast, Visions of Democracy, which extends her research interests to “humanities without walls” audiences. She started the podcast in 2020, and each episode, like her book, is rooted in oral history interviews with political organizers. Not only were these interviews incredibly rich in knowledge about participatory democracy, but they were also the most practical research method during a time when archives, which are already lacking in material on the subject, were closed to researchers due to COVID-19 lockdowns.

Each episode uses an interview to tell a different story, encouraging listeners to think about how democracy is more than just voting, and to consider the many forms of democratic participation people have used to secure their rights. She put out eight episodes during a fellowship at the Social Justice Institute at Case Western Reserve.

Season two will take a slightly different approach, as Stahler interviews leading scholars on the history of welfare in order to explore how access to public resources affects a person’s citizenship rights. This season will examine the factors that determine whether people are considered deserving or underserving of public resources, the barriers to accessing public resources, and how economic aspects of citizenship affect people’s daily lives and the broader health of American democracy. Each episode will take a deep dive into a specific welfare policy as well as look at the longer history of an individual program and how access to it has been shaped. The overarching goal of the season is to examine how today’s severe economic inequality puts the health of American democracy in doubt.

In response to the question “why public history?,” Stahler’s answer is simple. “I want to change the way people think about poverty and democracy,” she said. “In order to do that most effectively, I want to reach as wide an audience as possible. The severe economic inequality we are dealing with today and the growing political power of billionaires are topics on many Americans’ minds, and I think for concerned individuals it is important for us to know our roots. It’s important we know that 50 plus years ago, some of the poorest members of our society were also pointing out that economic injustice places doubt on the health of democracy. Their stories can spark hope and even creativity for those working for policy change today.”

 Stahler sees an important role for historians in the current moment, urging her fellow historians to use their skills and resources in public-facing ways. “Now more than ever, historians have to engage with the public to combat the rampant abuse of history we see happening,” she said. “For many people, this isn’t new. It’s just amplified. Many people have been misrepresenting our shared past to serve political purposes and the best way to combat that misinformation is to equip members of the public with historical knowledge.”

At the core of Stahler’s research philosophy is the notion that people have a stake in their history, and that by rooting our research projects in both public and academic audiences from the start, we prevent the narratives from being manipulated by elites and other entities seeking to distort them for their own gain. There is a sense of urgency in the work that renews Stahler’s interest daily, and looking to the past propels the work forward.

“Looking at the stories and oral histories, one of the biggest takeaways is that it’s important for us to remember that some people just refused to give up, even when the odds were stacked incredibly high against them, even when they failed over and over again to achieve their most ambitious goals,” she said.

“The women in Cleveland were determined to force their way into the spaces in which decisions were being made and brought their folding chairs, as Shirley Chisholm would say. Because at the very least, they were determined to remind people that they were Americans too,” Stahler observed, pointing to this moment as a time when relevancy met urgency.

 “They had a right to public resources, and they had a right to participate in their own governance and by giving up, by quitting political activism, they would have been surrendering those rights themselves, and that was something they would not do under any circumstances.” As she prepares to publish her research, our current moment is top of mind for Stahler, who noted that “when so many people are feeling politically defeated, it’s important to remind ourselves of stories like this and countless others.”