A scholar of American religion, culture and politics, Laurie Maffly-Kipp primarily researches African American religions, Mormonism and U.S. religion in global contexts. 

Her publications include the 1994 book, Religion and Society in Frontier California, which explores the nature of Protestant spiritual practices in Gold Rush California; articles on Mormon-Protestant conflicts in the Pacific Islands, African-Americans in Haiti and Africa, and Protestant outreach to Chinese immigrants in California; Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America, 1630-1965 (2006) with Leigh Schmidt and Mark Valeri; and Proclamation to the People: Nineteenth-Century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier (2008). Maffly-Kipp also authored Setting Down the Sacred Past: African American Race Histories (2010); American Scriptures, a Penguin Classics anthology of sacred texts (2010); and Women’s Work, a co-edited collection of writings by African American women historians (2010) with Kathryn Lofton.  

Maffly-Kipp has received fellowships and grants from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., the National Humanities Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The past president of the American Society of Church History and the Mormon History Association, Maffly-Kipp had her work in African American religion honored by the University of Heidelberg in 2014 with the James W.C. Pennington Award. 

She holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from Amherst College and an M.A. and Ph.D. with high distinction from Yale University in U.S. history. She previously taught at Amherst College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Washington University in St. Louis. 

She is currently working on a survey of global Mormonism that will be published by Basic Books.