Individuals from a variety of cultural or philosophical standpoints produced prolific Mormon-themed research, scholarship, or their popularization, in an era now past. Then, beginning in the decade of the 2000s, Mormon studies finally came into its own as an independent field of study when the sub-discipline became featured by then at a few academic institutions in the Western United States.
Some of the individuals with recognized expertise in the field are listed below. In consideration of space, members of Latter Day Saint movement denominations' overall leadership are not included (Dallin H. Oaks is listed for work he published prior his becoming a member of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve).
Selected list of past scholars
19th-century compilers of Mormon histories or essays
B. H. Roberts (1857–1933) — Assistant Church Historian of the LDS Church 1902–1933. Made first attempts to shift from apologetics to a professional historical approach.
W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) — BYU religion professor, 1967–1978.[1] Prolific popularizer[2] among LDS of its theology. (Also an influential, conservative American Constitutionalist and faith-based political theorist)
Dale Morgan (1914–1971) — Influential independent Utah historian
Leonard J. Arrington (1917–1999): Utah State Agricultural College; BYU; LDS Church Historian, 1972–1982 — Economist, known as the "Dean of Mormon History"[3] and "the Father of Mormon History."[4]
Jerald Tanner (1938–2006) — Independent, evangelical pamphleteer and provocateur who, with his wife Sandra (born 1941), documented such things as what he believed to be historical LDS doctrinal changes
Dean L. May: University of Utah — Professor of American History, Editor of the Journal of Mormon History (1982–1985), President of Mormon History Association (2002)
Boyd Jay Petersen: BYU — Biographer of Hugh Nibley; Utah Valley University — Literature of the Sacred and Mormon Literature professor; editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought starting 2016; past president of the Association for Mormon Letters
John L. Brooke: Ohio State University — director of the Center for Historical Research; author of The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844
Richard O. Cowan: BYU — professor of Church history and doctrine
Dean C. Jessee: LDS Church History Department; BYU — worked at the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History; general editor of The Joseph Smith Papers
Carol Cornwall Madsen: BYU — emerita research historian with the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church history and associate director of Women's Research Institute[5]
