Kerry Pimblott is a Lecturer in International History at the University of Manchester. A modern U.S. historian by training, she has broad interests in the fields of urban history, labor and working-class history, theology and religious history, and African diaspora studies. In both teaching and scholarship, Pimblott focuses on social movements for economic and racial justice, drawing upon community-based research methods to examine the relationships between race and class, the state, political economy, and radical activism.

Before joining Manchester, Pimblott was an Assistant Professor in African American & Diaspora Studies and History at the University of Wyoming. She completed her B.A. in American Studies at Kings College London and her PhD in History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. 

Her first book, Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2017), explores the relationship between the Black church, Black theology and the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Challenging conventional accounts of the movements de-Christianization, Faith in Black Power shows how Illinois-based activists mobilised emergent theological discourses as well as the financial resources of some of the nation's largest religious institutions to sustain grassroots Black Power struggles.

Pimblott's current research builds on this earlier work focusing on some of Black Power's global dimensions, including the role of activist travel in shaping radical thought and networks; and the distinctive character of Black Power struggles beyond the United States. She is currently working on a second book manuscript that explores the relationship of transnational religious institutions to the Global Black Power Movement.

Pimblott has previously held fellowships with the Dorothy G. Quinn Foundation, the Illinois Historic Preservation Society, and the Center for Democracy in a Multiracial Society. She is currently a co-investigator alongside Dr Kennetta Hammond Perry (Northwestern) on an Arts & Humanities Research Council grant examining Black Power in the UK. 

Pimblott's research grows out of longstanding involvement in grassroots labor and anti-racist organisations working to challenge state violence and its impact on racialised and working-class communities. She is also a founding member of the University of Manchester's Race, Roots & Resistance Collective which is dedicated to critical research and action on race(ism) in the places we live, study and work as well as strengthening pipelines for a new generation of diverse researchers to enter the academy.