Jessica Kimpell Johnson is the director of research for the Karsh Institute of Democracy and manager of the John L. Nau III Lab on the History & Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia. She received her doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford, where she was a Harry S. Truman Scholar. 

Previously, she was on the faculty at Columbia University in the Department of Political Science for almost a decade. While at Columbia, she created several new courses for her department and taught the year-long “Contemporary Civilization” course as part of Columbia’s renowned Core Curriculum. Her research has been published in the European Political Science Review, European Journal of Political Theory and on OpenDemocracy.net. She has edited and annotated a collection of the works of Thomas Paine, has recently written a chapter on civic ethos for a forthcoming book, "Wealth and Power" (Routledge), and has written opinion essays for various media outlets. 

Her teaching and research interests are largely in the history of political thought and contemporary political theory, specializing in democratic thought and republicanism. Prior to her doctoral studies, she received an MS in journalism from Northwestern University and worked as a journalist covering the US Congress for Congressional Quarterly (CQ) in Washington, DC. As an undergraduate, she was a White House intern and received her B.A. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota.