Richard Blackett became the Andrew Jackson Professor of History at Vanderbilt University in 2002. His work focuses on the United States abolitionist movement, the movement’s transatlantic connections, and the roles African Americans played in abolition. Blackett has also taught at the University of Pittsburgh (1971-85), Indiana University (1985-1996), University of Houston (1996-2002), and Oxford University (2013-2014). He received his BA in International Relations from the University of Keele, England, in 1969, and he received his MA from the University of Manchester, England, in 1973.

Blackett is the author of Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Louisiana State University Press, 1983); Beating Against the Barriers: Biographical Essays in Nineteenth-Century Afro-American History (Louisiana State University Press, 1986); Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent (Louisiana State University Press, Da Capo Press, 1989); Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, 2001); Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery (University of North Carolina Press, 2013); editor, Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (Louisiana State University Press, 1999); The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery (Cambridge University Press, 2018); and Samuel Ringgold Ward: A Life of Struggle (Yale University Press, 2023).

Blackett has also edited for the Journal of American History (Associate Editor, 1985-1990; Acting Editor, 1989-1990) and the Indiana Magazine of History (1993-1996).