Ayanna Thompson is Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and Executive Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS). She was the 2018âÂÂ19 president of the Shakespeare Association of America. She specializes in Renaissance drama and issues of race in performance.
Thompson graduated with an A.B. from Columbia University in 1994, where she was a Kluge scholar, and was mentored by Edward Said. She won a Marshall Scholarship to study at the University of Sussex, receiving a Masters in 1995. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 2001. Her doctoral dissertation was Depicting Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage.
Thompson was previously an investment banker at Lehman Brothers. Thompson was Professor at Arizona State University 2004-2013 before her appointment at George Washington University. Thompson returned to the Phoenix Arizona region after five years. In 2016, Thompson spoke at Washington and Lee University's convocation ceremony. Thompson served as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, 2017-2018. She was previously President of the Shakespeare Association of America (2018âÂÂ19).
She currently serves on the boards of the journals Shakespeare Quarterly, Renaissance Drama, and Shakespeare Bulletin. She has served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Marshall Scholars. In 2021 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Thompson is an Associate Scholar and the Chair of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Research Board, and is a member of the Folger Shakespeare Library Board of Governors.
Thompson gave the keynote speech on "Shakespeare and Blackface" at the Shakespeare and Social Justice conference held at the University of Cape Town in association with the University of the Witwatersrand and the Shakespeare Association of Southern Africa in 2019.
As Executive Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Thompson is the creator of RaceB4Race, an ongoing conference series and professional network community for scholars and students of premodern critical race studies. In 2021, Thompson's center and RaceB4Race received a $3.5m grant from the Mellon Foundation.
She is the author of several books including Blackface, Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America, and Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centered Approach. Thompson has been described as 'a world-class scholar', an 'accomplished leader', a 'true innovator', and 'a major force'.
In 2025, she was elected an International Fellow at the British Academy in the "Early Modern Languages and Literatures to 1830" section.
Ayanna Thompson serves as a consultant and dramaturg for many theater companies and is a Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at The Public Theater in New York.