Judy Kertész (Lumbee-unenrolled) is a historian whose publicly-engaged research focuses on questions of Indigenous dispossession, research issues in Indigenous North American education, Indigenous knowledge systems, and the Indigenous relationship to museums, archives, and institutions of higher learning.
Kertész earned a BA in History at Georgia State University, and an MA in Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. She taught English as a Second Language in Kagoshima, Japan for several years before returning to resume her graduate studies at Harvard University, where she earned a PhD in the History of Civilization (American Studies). Since then, she has taught courses in Indigenous North American history, early American history, history of Indigenous education, comparative colonialisms, comparative settler states, history of commodity culture, and museum studies.