Karen J. Hunt

Karen J. Hunt, director of the John Hope Franklin Collection of African and African American Documentation and African American resource librarian at Duke University and a 1989 Wright State University graduate, is the Outstanding Alumni Award winner from the College of Liberal Arts.

The John Hope Franklin Collection is a repository for African and African American studies and an educational outreach division of the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library at Duke University. Named after distinguished historian John Hope Franklin, the collection collects, preserves and promotes materials on the history of Africa and people of African descent. While a Wright State student in 1986, Hunt decided to join the Peace Corps. She served in Kenya, East Africa, until 1988. Since leaving Wright State, Hunt has worked for the National Archives and Record Administration in Washington, D.C., and as corporate records manager for Northern State Power in Minneapolis. She later was a manuscripts assistant at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, assistant university archivist at the College of William and Mary, and an associate professor, systems archivist, and director of the Department of Archives and Special Collections at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

Hunt has published numerous articles and presented on the John Hope Franklin collection, the future of archiving and on 19th century physician and abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond.