Blake Grindon studies intercultural brokerage, captivity, and race in Early America. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Bard College in 2011, where her undergraduate thesis, “The Ambiguous Frontier: Phineas Stevens as Cultural Broker, 1749-52” received the Wilton Moore Lockwood Prize in Critical Writing and the Marc Bloch Prize for History. She is especially interested in how relations between Native powers and the empires of Britain and France throughout the eighteenth century shaped the lives of ordinary people in North America. Her other interests include Atlantic History, colonialism, Native American history, slavery, and public history.

After graduating from Bard Blake spent six years in New York City. She worked at the Brooklyn Historical Society, a nationally recognized urban history center, in events and administration.