Christa Dierksheide

Christa Dierksheide is Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Her first book, “Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas, 1770-1840”  brought the Anglophone Caribbean and the U.S. South into the same frame, arguing that “improvement” lay at the core of both proslavery and antislavery thinking. 

Her second book, “Beyond Jefferson: the Hemingses, Randolphs, and the Making of Nineteenth Century America,” is a global history of Jefferson’s grandchildren on both sides of the color line. Her third book, “Jefferson's Wolf: The Struggle to End Slavery in the Founding Era,” co-authored with Nick Guyatt, is forthcoming in 2026. Before returning to academia, she worked as the historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, where she curated or contributed to several exhibitions, including: “The Boisterous Sea of Liberty,” in 2008; “Mulberry Row: Landscape of Slavery,” in 2012; and “Sally Hemings: A Life” in 2018. She co-teaches Race and Slavery on UVA's North Grounds.