Jim Casey's research and teaching begin with nineteenth-century Black print culture, literature, and political organizing and extend into the areas of public humanities, digital humanities, archives, critical data studies, crowdsourcing, and machine learning. 

His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives (NHPRC), The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and others. His collaborative digital projects have been recognized by the MLA Biennial Prize for a Digital Project; the ASA Digital Humanities Caucus Digital Project Prize; and was designated by the National Endowment for the Humanities as one of its sixty all-time “Essentials.”