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.

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. Her publications include 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).