FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – August 26, 2025
Media Contact: J.A. Lyon, Director of Marketing & Communications, jlyon@monticello.org
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the private nonprofit that owns and operates Monticello, is pleased to announce the selection of Edward L. Ayers as the 2026 Fritz and Claudine Kundrun Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. The nine-month Kundrun Fellowship—Monticello's most prestigious—enables fellows to devote their time to research and writing on topics directly related to Thomas Jefferson, his times, and legacy.
Across his storied career, which included 27 years as a professor of history at the University of Virginia, Ayers was named National Professor of the Year, received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama at the White House, won the Bancroft, Beveridge, and Lincoln prizes in American history, and served as president of the Organization of American Historians. He was the president of the University of Richmond from 2007 to 2015, and currently serves as president emeritus and professor of humanities.
“Ed Ayers’ career is defined by scholarship in the public interest,” said Andrew M. Davenport, the Vice President for Research and Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies (ICJS) at Monticello. “As Monticello’s 2025-2026 Fritz and Claudine Kundrun Fellow during the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, Ayers will make yet another significant contribution to our knowledge of American history.”
Ayers’ leadership in digital and public history stretches back decades. In the early 1990s, he headed the Valley of the Shadow project at the University of Virginia, and later, Ayers worked with the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond, where he authored an interpretation of migration in the South from 1790 to 2020 based on dozens of path-breaking maps that won an international prize in cartography. He served for 13 years as the founding board chair of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond. He has also served on the boards of Colonial Williamsburg, the Fort Monroe Foundation, the Valentine Museum, Virginia Humanities, and other organizations. He headed the Future of Richmond’s Past effort in the sesquicentennial commemoration of the American Civil War and Emancipation and served on the Monument Avenue Commission in Richmond.
Ayers also founded and oversees two innovative projects that seek to integrate and advance the practice of history. New American History shares digital projects with classes at all levels, providing resources to help teachers engage students with history in new ways. Bunk gathers and connects representations of the American past that fill media channels, giving shape and coherence to the unceasing flood of narrative and argument created every day.
During Ayers' time as Kundrun Fellow, he plans to advance New American History and Bunk while amplifying state historical societies’ efforts to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary.
About The Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation was incorporated in 1923 to preserve Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today, the foundation seeks to bring history forward into national and global dialogues by engaging audiences with Jefferson’s world and ideas and inviting them to experience the power of place at Monticello and on its website. Monticello is recognized as a National Historic Landmark, a United Nations World Heritage Site and a Site of Conscience. As a private, nonprofit organization, the foundation’s regular operating budget does not receive ongoing government support to fund its twofold mission of preservation and education. For information, visit monticello.org.