Author, Editor, Historian
Dr. Jason A. Higgins is an award-winning author, editor, and oral historian at Virginia Tech. He is the Digital Scholarship Coordinator for Virginia Tech Publishing & Press, and an assistant professor of history, jointly affiliated with University Libraries and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. A proponent of open access publishing, he manages peer-reviewed journals, supports the publication of books and digital projects, and supervises a digital humanities internship program at VT Publishing, producing student-centered, community-engaged oral history projects. In the History Department at Virginia Tech, he teaches the Vietnam War, African American History, and Oral History Methods.
Author, Prisoners after War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration (UMassPress)
- Oral History Association Best Book Award, Winner 2025
- National Council on Public History Book Award, Honorable Mention 2026
- Veterans Studies Association Best Book Award Finalist, 2026
- Albert L. Sturm Award for Research Excellence, Winner 2026
- Open access edition available with a TOME grant
Co-editor, Service Denied: Marginalized Veterans in Modern American History, (UMass Press 2022).
Jason earned a Ph.D. in History and a graduate certificate in Public History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He also earned a Master’s in English from Oklahoma State University, which awarded him the Rising Star Alumni Award and the Graduate Research Excellence Award. He is a proud first-generation college student from the University of Arkansas at Monticello, where he double-majored in English and History, graduated Magna Cum Laude, and also earned UAM’s Rising Star Alumni Award.
