Watch the 2018 OAH Presidential Address | "Everyone Their Own Historian"

Edward Ayers has been named National Professor of the Year, received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama at the White House, won the Bancroft Prize and Beveridge Prize in American history, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He has collaborated on major digital history projects, including the Valley of the Shadow, American Panorama, and Bunk, and is one of the cohosts for BackStory, a popular podcast about American history. He is Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond as well as former Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is The Thin Light of Freedom, winner of the 2018 Lincoln Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Avery Craven Prize from the OAH.