Ed Ayers

Biography

Edward L. Ayers has been president of the University of Richmond since 2007. Dr. Ayers is a noted historian and the author of eleven books on American history. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the National Medal for the Humanities, awarded by President Obama at the White House in the summer of 2013. He has also won the Bancroft Prize for distinguished writing in American History and the Beveridge Prize for the best book in English on the history of the Americas since 1492 as well being named a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Dr. Ayers’ digital archive project, The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, has been used in thousands of classrooms around the world, and he works closely with the Digital Scholarship Lab at UR on a digital atlas of American history, funded by a large grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Dr. Ayers is also a co-host of BackStory, a nationally syndicated radio show that ties history to the present day. Dr. Ayers is an accomplished teacher. In 2003 he was awarded the National Professor of the Year from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and he annually teaches an undergraduate seminar for first-year students.

EDUCAUSE Publications

EDUCAUSE Presentations