Founding Director and Chief Editor
Jane E. Calvert (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2003) is currently the foremost Dickinson scholar, having worked on him for over two decades. Her book, Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson (Cambridge, 2009), is the first work to give a comprehensive explanation of his thought, action, and contribution to the founding of America. Her research has been sponsored by top institutions around the country, including the Newberry Library, the Huntington Library, the American Philosophical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia/Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the David Library of the American Revolution. Dr. Calvert speaks to academic and public audiences around the country on Dickinson and issues related to the American Founding. She is a member of the Association for Documentary Editing and a 2010 graduate of the Editing Institute sponsored by the National Historic Preservation and Records Commission and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Her biography of Dickinson, Penman of the Founding, will be published by Oxford University Press in October 2024.
Associate Editor
Ian Iverson (Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2022) is a historian of American politics and society, with interests ranging from the Revolutionary period to Reconstruction. Before joining the JDP, Iverson worked as an editorial specialist for the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition.
Assistant Editors
Nathan R. Kozuskanich (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2005) is Associate Professor of History at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario. His work is in Revolutionary America with a focus on Pennsylvania. He is co-editor of The Second Amendment on Trial (2013), and has written a biography of Benjamin Franklin for Routledge's Historical Americans series. He has published several articles and chapters on the coming of the Revolution in Pennsylvania, the militia, and the right to bear arms.
Abigail Mortell (B.A., University of Kentucky, 2023) interned on the JDP for two years before joining the team as a full-time member in August 2023. Her award-winning honors thesis explored the idea of civic education in the founding of Dickinson College in 1783.
Ian Tonat (Ph.D., William & Mary, 2022) is an editor and historian of early America, with interests in Native American history, French colonial history, and the history of the American West. Before joining the JDP, he worked as an editor for publications including the William and Mary Quarterly and the American Historical Review.
Daniel Bottino (Ph.D., Rutgers University, 2024) is a historian of the society and culture of early America and early modern Europe, focusing especially on the law, religion, colonization, and material culture. His dissertation employed land deeds and related legal records to analyze Native adaptation and resistance to English colonization in seventeenth-century Maine.
Editorial Assistants
Donna E. Kelly (M.A., public history, North Carolina State University, 1988) was head of the Special Collections Section of the State Archives of North Carolina. She also served as head of the Historical Publications Section of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, editor-in-chief of the North Carolina Historical Review, and co-editor of The Papers of James Iredell, 1784–1789: Volume 3 (2003).
Partners
The JDP is based at the University of Delaware's Morris Library, and the volumes are published by the University of Delaware Press in conjunction with Rutgers University Press.
The JDP is partnered with the Center for Digital Editing (CDE) at the University of Virginia to create and host the digital edition of the Dickinson Writings. The CDE is directed by Jennifer Stertzer, director of the Papers of George Washington.