Jen Shannon

Bio

Jen Shannon started up and manages the National Museum of the American Indian's Outreach and Engagement Planning Office. Prior to joining the NMAI in 2022, she was a museum curator and associate professor of cultural anthropology and museum studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She was a 2021–2022 Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellow, co-produces NAGPRA Comics and Kumeyaay Comics, and is the author of Our Lives: Collaboration, Native Voice, and the Making of the National Museum of the American Indian (2014) and Posterity Is Now: Practicing Museum Anthropology, Collections Care, and Collaborative Research with Indigenous Peoples (2025). Jen began her museum career as a curatorial research assistant for the NMAI’s inaugural exhibitions before earning her PhD in sociocultural anthropology.