Richard Bell holds a PhD in American History from Harvard University and is currently a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland. He is the author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home and a specialist in American history between the Revolution and the Civil War. He has long experience in the University Honors program and has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. In 2021, Bell was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.