She received a Ph.D. in history from Howard University. Her scholarship has appeared in the Journal of African American History, Georgia Historical Quarterly, Passport, The United States and West Africa: Interaction and Relations, Before Obama: A Reappraisal of Black Reconstruction Era Politicians, Converging Identities: Blackness in the Contemporary Diaspora, and Slavery and Freedom in Savannah. Bell is a former American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellow.