James Hankins is a professor of history at Harvard University and General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library. He is the author, editor or translator of 30 books and some 200 articles on Renaissance philosophy, humanism, and political thought. His Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University in 2019, won the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize of the American Historical Association in 2020, and was named Times Literary Supplement Best Book of the Year in 2020. It has been translated into Italian and is currently being translated into Chinese.

Hankins is a Corresponding Member of the British Academy and was awarded the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award by the Renaissance Society of America. He also writes opinion pieces and long-form essays for the Wall Street Journal, First Things, American Affairs, The New Criterion, Law and Liberty, Public Discourse, and The Claremont Review of Books. A new book, Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy will be published by Harvard University Press in early 2023.