Ronald K. Esplin

Ronald K. Esplin was Dean Jessee’s colleague in the History Division of the Church Historical Department in the 1970s and then in the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History at Brigham Young University in the 1980s. From 1986 to 2002, Esplin was director of that institute. He retired from BYU as a professor of Church History in 2005 when the Joseph Smith Papers Project moved to the Church History Department in Salt Lake City. Esplin served as a managing editor of the Joseph Smith Papers Project from 2000 to 2012, after which he continued as a general editor until the project was completed in 2023. He retired from the Church History Department in 2016 and presently serves as director of the Brigham Young Papers.