Katie Drash Mapes returned to academia after almost a decade in public history. She received her bachelor's from the University of Virginia in 2011, her MA from Virginia Commonwealth University in December 2025, and began her History DPhil at St. Antony’s College in the fall of 2026.  She has worked at historic sites interpreting everything from the American Revolution to Jim Crow, with extended focus on the Early Republic and urban slavery. Her MA thesis explored intergenerational support in Chief Justice John Marshall’s family through enslaved labor and its impact on interpreting his jurisprudence. Her dissertation looks at the movement of enslaved people within enslaving families, comparing Virginia and Jamaica in the early 19th century to better understand how the motivations and actions of kinship networks supported the continuation of slave societies.
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