Ayanna Thompson
Ayanna Thompson is a Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, and the executive director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She is the author of many titles, including Blackface and Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars. She is currently collaborating with Curtis Perry on the Arden4 edition of Titus Andronicus.
Thompson is a member of the board of trustees of the Royal Shakespeare Company and is a Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at The Public Theater in New York. She also serves on the board of Play On Shakespeare, and previously served on the board for Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, DC.
She served as the President of the Shakespeare Association of America, was one of Phi Beta Kappa’s Visiting Scholars, and was a member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Marshall Scholars.
She is an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. In 2024, she was awarded the Sydney Hook Memorial Award for which “recognizes national distinction by a single scholar in each of three endeavors — scholarship, undergraduate teaching, and leadership in the cause of liberal arts education.”
Thompson is an Associate Scholar and the chair of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Research Board, and a member of the Folger Shakespeare Library Board of Governors.
Non-profit board membership
Board of Governors, The Royal Shakespeare Company | 2021–present
Board of Governors, The Folger Shakespeare Library | 2021–present
Board Member, The National Parks Arts Foundation | 2021–present
Board Member, Play On Shakespeare | 2020–present
Council of Scholars, Theatre for a New Audience | 2017–present
Board Member, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company | 2017–2018
Board of Directors, Association of Marshall Scholars | 2015–2017
Research funding
Ayanna Thompson is the recipient of many grants and research awards totaling over $7 million in humanities research funding. She is the PI on projects funded by the Mellon Foundation, the Hitz Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Presidential Strategic Initiative Grant at ASU, and the Arizona Community Foundation. She is the Co-PI on projects funded by SSRC-NEH, the Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for Humanities Research at ASU.
