R. Isabela Morales is a public historian and scholar of slavery and emancipation in the United States, whose work centers individual, local, and family stories as a window into the larger landscape of race and slavery in 19th century America. 

Her first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2022), reconstructs the history of the Townsend family, the descendants of white planter Samuel Townsend who, upon his death, left almost the entirety of his fortune to his five sons, four daughters, and two nieces: all of them his slaves. The book was awarded the 2023 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the foremost international book award for the history of slavery and abolition, and the 2023 Tom Watson Brown Book Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in Civil War history.  

In addition to her academic work, Morales has produced special exhibitions, oral history projects, and award-winning public programs for museums and universities in New York, New Jersey, and beyond, most recently at the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum. From 2017 to 2024, she served as the editor of The Princeton & Slavery Project, a large-scale public humanities initiative investigating Princeton University’s historical links to the institution of slavery.  

Her current book project is an exploration of gender, slavery, and power during the American South’s violent transformation from Native land to entrenched slave society, as seen through the life of one social-climbing female planter and enslaver in antebellum Alabama.  

Morales received her PhD in history from Princeton University and her B.A. in history and American Studies from The University of Alabama.