Gerrit J. Dirkmaat

Gerrit J. Dirkmaat is an assistant professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University.  He received his PhD from the University of Colorado in 2010 where he studied nineteenth-century American expansionism and foreign relations. His dissertation was titled “Enemies Foreign and Domestic: US Relations with Mormons in the US Empire in North America, 1844–1854.” He worked as a historian and writer for the Church History Department from 2010 to 2014 with the Joseph Smith Papers Project. He served as a volume co-editor for Documents Volume 1, the lead volume editor on Documents Volume 3, and continues to work as an editor for the Joseph Smith Papers project on Administrative Volume 1, The Council of Fifty Minutes and Documents Volume 8. Prior to his work at the Church History Department, he served as the senior assistant editor of Diplomatic History from 2003 to 2009. He is the co-author, along with Michael MacKay, of From Darkness Unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon, published by Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University and Deseret Book, 2015.