Jason K. Duncan was born in Albany, New York, and educated in Catholic schools in that city. He graduated in 1985 from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, a college originally in the Universalist tradition, with a B.A. in Government. He later earned an M.A. in Russian Area Studies from Georgetown University, writing his Master’s Essay on “Martin Luther King, Jr. Through Soviet Eyes.” He then worked in politics, including three years as a legislative assistant in Washington, D.C. to U.S. Representative Tom Sawyer of Ohio.

Professor Duncan went on to earn his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Iowa in 1999, writing a dissertation entitled “A Most Democratic Class: New York Catholics and the Early American Republic.” In 2002, he joined the faculty at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he is currently Professor of History. He teaches classes in American and Russian History, and has twice served as co-director of the college’s semester program in Ireland, where he taught Irish History.