Roraig Finney is a PhD student studying the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century U.S. South, working under Dr. Michael Woods. His research interests focus on political identity, partisanship, ideology, and political economy. His planned dissertation focuses on the politics of immigration in the South from the Know-Nothings to the Johnson-Reed Act.

He obtained his MA from University College London in 2019, and his BA from the University of Virginia in 2016.