January 2023—April 2023
January—June 2019
Laurie Maffly-Kipp is the Archer Alexander Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis’s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and a 2019 affiliate faculty member of the Maxwell Institute. After completing her Ph.D. in American History at Yale University she taught both American and Religious Studies for twenty-four years at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During her distinguished career she has served as president of the American Society of Church History and the Mormon History Association. In addition to writing the Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the Book of Mormon, her publications include Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (Harvard University Press, 2010), Religion and Society in Frontier California (Yale University Press, 1994), and co-edited collections such as Proclamation to the People: Nineteenth-Century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier (University of Utah Press, 2008).
Her teaching and research focuses on African American religions, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and other matters concerning intercultural contact.
During her time at the Institute, Dr. Maffly-Kipp will continue her current research into international Latter-day Saint history while also organizing and mentoring women in related academic fields. Preliminary plans are underway for her to lead a possible seminar, symposium, and other collaboration opportunities with scholars at BYU and from around the region.