Lerone A. Martin is Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Chair and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University.

Martin is the author of The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism and the award-winning Preaching on Wax: The Phonograph and the Making of Modern African American Religion, which received the prestigious Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize for outstanding scholarship in religious history by a first-time author from the American Society of Church History in 2015. His research has been supported by the NEH, the ACLS, The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust, and the Louisville Institute for the Study of American Religion. Most recently, he received a $250,000 grant from The Teagle Foundation to implement “Citizenship and Freedom: From Plato to Maya,” an intensive three-week summer humanities seminar and school-year civic engagement program for promising, underserved high school students from the St. Louis region enrolled in the university’s College Prep Program. Martin has also been recognized for his teaching, receiving grants and fellowships from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, the 2019 WashU Dean of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award, and the ArtSci Excellence in Teaching Award in the Humanities. Martin has served as a research consultant for continuing education and recidivism at New York’s Sing Sing State Prison, as well as an instructor at Georgia’s Metro State Prison. Currently he is an instructor at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center with the WashU Prison Education Program. His commentary and writing have appeared in popular national media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and CNN.