Elizabeth Nelson is an assistant professor in the Medical Humanities and Health Studies Program at Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) and an adjunct assistant professor of Africana studies and history. Prior to coming to IUPUI, Nelson earned a PhD in French History at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2015 and served as the Director of Public Programs at the Indiana Medical History Museum from 2014-2017. A medical historian, Nelson’s primary research interests center on modern institutions of confinement such as mental hospitals and prisons in both the United States and France. She explores how people carve out bold and meaningful lives in the most inhospitable spaces. Nelson is currently working on a collaborative book project on the final years and closure of Indiana’s Central State Hospital, inspired by newsletters published by patients with intellectual disabilities in the late 1980s. Since 2018 she has coordinated the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project and is coeditor with Michelle Daniel Jones of the IWPHP edited collection Who Would Believe a Prisoner? Indiana Women’s Carceral Institutions, 1848–1920 (The New Press, 2023).