Martha C. Howell is an American historian. She is Miriam Champion Emerita Professor of History at Columbia University.^[1]

Howell received her B.A. from Georgetown University, and both her M.A. and PhD. from Columbia University.^[1] She taught at Rutgers University before joining the Columbia University faculty in 1989, serving as Director of the university's Institute for Research on Women and Gender from 1989 to 1995.^[1] Her specialization is the socioeconomic and women's history in Northern Europe during the late Medieval and Early modern centuries, focusing on the Netherlands, northern France, and Germany.^[2]

She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 in the field of Medieval history.^[3] She received an honorary doctorate from Ghent University and was elected a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.^[4][5]