WLeonard James Arrington was an American author, academic and the founder of the Mormon History Association. He is known as the "Dean of Mormon History" and "the Father of Mormon History" because of his many influential contributions to the field. Since 1842, he was the first non-general authority Church Historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from 1972 to 1982, and was director of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History from 1982 until 1986.
WPhilip Layton Barlow is a Harvard-trained scholar who specializes in American religious history, religious geography, and Mormonism. In 2019, Barlow was appointed associate director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Barlow was the first full-time professor of Mormon studies at a secular university as the inaugural Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University (USU), from 2007 to 2018.
WRichard Lyman Bushman is an American historian and Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, having previously taught at Brigham Young University, Harvard University, Boston University, and the University of Delaware. Bushman is the author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, an important biography of Joseph Smith, progenitor of the Latter Day Saint movement. Bushman also was an editor for the Joseph Smith Papers Project and now serves on the national advisory board. Bushman has been called "one of the most important scholars of American religious history" of the late 20th century. In 2012, a $3-million donation to the University of Virginia established the Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies in his honor.
WDouglas James Davies, is a Welsh Anglican theologian, anthropologist, and academic, specialising in the history, theology, and sociology of death. He is Professor in the Study of Religion at the University of Durham. His fields of expertise also include anthropology, the study of religion, the rituals and beliefs surrounding funerary rites and cremation around the globe, Mormonism and Mormon studies. His research interests cover identity and belief, and Anglican leadership.
WJohn Parkinson Dehlin is an American psychologist, podcast host, and excommunicated member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Dehlin founded the Mormon Stories Podcast, as well as several other Mormon-themed podcasts, blogs, and web sites. He was an influential early participant in the Mormon blogosphere, and blogs at Patheos.com. He has advocated for the rights of skeptics in Mormonism, LGBT rights, equality for women, and other individual views outside mainstream Mormonism.
WGeorge Eugene England, Jr., usually credited as Eugene England, was a Mormon writer, teacher, and scholar. He founded Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the oldest independent journal in Mormon Studies, with G. Wesley Johnson, Paul G. Salisbury, Joseph H. Jeppson, and Frances Menlove in 1966, and cofounded the Association for Mormon Letters in 1976. He is also widely known in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for his many essays about Mormon culture and thought. From 1977–1998, England taught Mormon Literature at Brigham Young University. England described the ideal modern Mormon scholar as "critical and innovative as his gifts from God require but conscious of and loyal to his own unique heritage and nurturing community and thus able to exercise those gifts without harm to others or himself."
WAvraham Gileadi is a Dutch-born American scholar and professor specializing in the Hebrew language and analysis of Book of Isaiah. A longtime professor at Brigham Young University, he was one of the "September Six" of prominent scholars excommunicated by the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1993, but several years later Gileadi formally rejoined the church and insists that his excommunication was recognized by church leadership as "a mistake".
WTerryl Lynn Givens is a senior research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University (BYU). Until 2019, he was a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, where he held the James A. Bostwick Chair in English.
WJon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer. He is the author of best-selling non-fiction books—Into the Wild; Into Thin Air; Under the Banner of Heaven; and Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman—as well as numerous magazine articles. He was a member of an ill-fated expedition to summit Mount Everest in 1996, one of the deadliest disasters in the history of climbing Everest.
WArmand Lind Mauss was an American sociologist specializing in the sociology of religion. He was Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Religious Studies at Washington State University and was the most frequently published author of Sociology works on Mormons during his long career. A special conference on his work in Mormon studies was held in 2013 at California's Claremont Graduate University (CGU), the papers from which were subsequently published by the University of Utah Press in the format of a Festschrift, where he was honored as "one of the most prominent Mormon intellectuals of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries."
WAdam S. Miller is an American author of religious criticism and interpretation, with an focus on contemporary Latter-day Saint lay theology. Miller is also a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas, where he directs the college's honors program.
WHugh Winder Nibley was an American scholar and an apologist of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) for nearly 50 years. He was a prolific author, and wrote apologetic works supporting the archaeological, linguistic, and historical claims of Joseph Smith. He was a member of the LDS Church, and wrote and lectured on LDS scripture and doctrinal topics, publishing many articles in the LDS Church magazines.
WBenjamin E. Park is an American historian concentrating on early American political, religious, and intellectual history, history of gender, religious studies, slavery, anti-slavery, and Atlantic history. Park is an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University.
WSteven L. Peck is an evolutionary biologist, blogger, poet, and novelist. His literary work is influential in Mormon literature circles. He is a professor of biology at Brigham Young University (BYU) He grew up in Moab, Utah and lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah.
WDaniel Carl Peterson is a former professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University (BYU).
WBrigham Henry Roberts was a historian, politician, and leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He edited a popular six-volume history of the LDS Church and also wrote Studies of the Book of Mormon—published posthumously—which discussed the validity of the Book of Mormon as an ancient record. Roberts was denied a seat as a member of United States Congress because of his practice of polygamy.
WJo Ann Barnett Shipps, known as Jan Shipps, is an American historian specializing in Latter Day Saint history, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. Shipps is generally regarded as the foremost non-Mormon scholar of the Latter Day Saint movement, having given particular attention to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her first book on the subject was Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition published by the University of Illinois Press. Recently, the University of Illinois Press published her book Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons, in which she interweaves her own history of Mormon-watching with 16 essays on Mormon history and culture.
WWillard Cleon Skousen was an American conservative author and faith-based political theorist. A notable anti-communist and supporter of the John Birch Society, Skousen's works involved a wide range of subjects including the Six-Day War, Mormon eschatology, New World Order conspiracies, and parenting. His most popular works are The Five Thousand Year Leap and The Naked Communist.
WBrady Udall is an American writer. In 2010, he was appointed Writer-in-Residence of Idaho, a position he held until 2013.