Meagan Wierda is an American historian specializing in the antebellum United States. Her research primarily focuses on the history of slavery, abolition, and the production of scientific knowledge and expertise in the 19th century. She investigates how African Americans incorporated quantification into their activism leading up to the Civil War. Currently, she is working on a book project, under contract with the University of Chicago Press, that addresses who gets counted in the antebellum United States. Her recent publications include "Statistics 'about African American Activists, Census 1840, Radical Potential Quantification" in the Journal of Early Republic, and "Population Projections: Demographic Fearmongering 'Uterine Colonization' during the Age of Gradual Emancipation" in the Journal for the History Knowledge, both accompanied by related blog posts.