Danielle Wiggins is a scholar of modern African American politics and culture and the history of the United States since 1970. Her current research examines the intersections between the development of post-civil rights Black politics and the emergent "New" Democratic Party between the mid-1970s and early 1990s.

In her forthcoming manuscript, she investigates debates and policies concerning crime, Black families, and employment in Atlanta to trace the development of a reformist "Politics of Black Excellence" among Black Democrats in the post-civil rights era. Her writing has been featured in the Journal of Urban History, the Journal of African American History, Black Perspectives, Atlanta Studies, and the Washington Post's "Made By History."

At Caltech, she teaches courses on Black freedom movements since Emancipation as well as recent African American and United States history.