Karen Flynn, PhD
Professor and Terrance and Karyn Holm Endowed Chair
Director, Midwest Nursing History Center
Department of Population Health Nursing Science
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Contact
Building & Room:
College of Nursing
Address:
845 S. Damen Ave., 924E NURS, (MC 802), Chicago, IL 60612
Office Phone:
Email:
About
Karen Flynn is the Terrance & Karyn Holm Endowed Professor in the Department of Population Health Nursing Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago, College of Nursing and director of the Midwest Nursing History Research Center. Her research lies at the intersection of Black feminist and diaspora studies, health and care work, nursing history, and transnational mobilities with keen attention to race, gender, and equity. Her award-winning book Moving Beyond Borders: Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the African Canadian Diaspora (University of Toronto, 2011) is the first book-length manuscript that examines the experiences of Black Canadian and Caribbean nurses and the transnational formation of the occupation.
Flynn is completing a second book project tentatively titled The Black Pacific: The African Diaspora in East Asia, which maps the travel itineraries of young Black English as Foreign Language teachers across borders, forthcoming McGill-Queen’s University Press.
As a scholar, teacher and public intellectual, Dr. Flynn strives to ensure that her public scholarship is accessible, available, and translatable to broader audiences.
Selected Grants
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Resilience and Care in Black Communities: The COVID-19 pandemic in East St. Louis, Illinois, Primary PI
University of Illinois, Presidential Presidential Initiative for Expanding the Humanities., Remembering Black Life in Color: Care, Memory, Community and COVID-19, CO-I
Donnelly Foundation, Unearthing and Celebrating Black Nurses in Chicago, CO-I
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Insight Development Grant, Recovering Black Canadian Midwives, CO-I