Jay Harrison

Jay T. Harrison is an early American historian with research interests in colonial North America and colonial Mexico, combining both as a borderlands historian of New Spain and the greater American Southwest, the region’s Indigenous peoples, and the early missions in the area. He teaches Latin American history courses at RISD, emphasizing cultural perspectives and the evidence that informs our knowledge of the varied peoples of the larger region.

His research also considers the praxis and pedagogy of public history in museums and archives, which draws on his experience as a museum and archives director prior to his time as a professor and collaborative work with collecting institutions in the years since. He was a tenured faculty member at Hood College until 2024, where he chaired the history department and led the college’s program in public history. His students have worked and interned in dozens of museums, historical sites, archives, and state and federal parks over the years.

His most recent publications include two co-edited books, The Franciscans in Colonial Mexico (University of Oklahoma Press/Academy of American Franciscan History, 2021) and At the Heart of the Borderlands: Africans and Afro-descendants on the Edges of the Spanish Empire (University of New Mexico Press, 2023). He is currently working on a study of the Franciscan missionaries in Texas from the later 17th century to the early 19th century.