Douglas Bradburn, PhD

President & CEO, George Washington's Mount Vernon

Douglas Bradburn, Ph.D. is the President and CEO of George Washington's Mount Vernon. Bradburn joined Mount Vernon in 2013 when named the Founding Director of The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon and became the 11th Director of George Washington's Mount Vernon in 2018. He is an award-winning author and well-known scholar of early American history. Bradburn is the author of The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the American Union, 1774-1804, and three anthologies, including Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion. He is the co-founder and editor of the award-winning book series, Early American Histories, at the University of Virginia Press, and the winner of numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including the yearlong Gilder Lehrman Research Fellowship at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello.

Oct. 23, 2023

A Presidential Primer

The State of the Union address may be an annual tradition now, but when Washington prepared to give his address in 1790, the expectations weighed heavily upon him. To prepare for this momentous occasion, Washington turned, p…

Guests: Curt Dahl , Anne Fertig, PhD , Douglas Bradburn, PhD

Oct. 9, 2023

A Gift from Spain

Washington bought a copy of Don Quixote on the last day of the Constitutional Convention. But what is so significant about this Spanish story? And what did Benjamin Franklin and the Spanish ambassador have to do with it? In …

Guests: Curt Dahl , Anne Fertig, PhD , Douglas Bradburn, PhD