Jane Kamensky

Jane Kamensky, newly appointed President of Monticello/The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (effective January 2024), has transformed understanding of early American history through innovative approaches to cultural and social history. After earning her BA (1985) and PhD (1993) in History from Yale University, she built an extraordinary career spanning prestigious institutions including Brandeis, Brown, and Harvard, where she served as Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library. Her award-winning book "A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley" (2016) earned multiple prizes including the New-York Historical Society's Zalaznick Book Prize, while her broader scholarship spans from colonial speech politics to America's first banking collapse. As co-founder of the digital journal Common-place and principal investigator for Educating for American Democracy, she has pioneered new approaches to public history. Her achievements include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Mellon Foundations, service as a Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Commissioner, and election to multiple scholarly societies. Through her new leadership role at Monticello, she continues to advance understanding of American history while preparing for the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.