Jacki Thompson Rand

Jacki Thompson Rand is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois with joint appointments in the Department of History, American Indian Studies Program, and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. She also serves as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Native Affairs, the first in this role. Her research focuses on federal Indian law, settler colonialism, and global indigenous histories, with a current book project examining violence against Native women through a southeastern tribal lens in the late twentieth century.

Education: Ph.D. in History from the University of Oklahoma (1998). Prior to academia, she worked at the Smithsonian Institution (1983–1994), organizing consultations between the National Museum of the American Indian and Native communities. She teaches courses on Native North America, federal Indian law, museums, and human rights, and is developing a new course on global indigenous peoples and settler colonialism.

Professional Affiliations: Editorial board member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Journal. Co-founder of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) American Indian Studies Consortium, serving on its Executive Committee (2000–2006). Organized the first CIC AIS graduate research conference in 1999 at the University of Iowa.

Research Interests:

• Intersection of law and violence against Indigenous peoples
• Decolonization of museum practices
• Global comparative indigenous studies