Miriam Jorgensen is a Research Director of the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona, Research Director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, and Professor of Indigenous Nation Building at the UTS Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research. Her work in Indigenous governance and economic development—in the US, Canada, and Australia—has addressed issues as wide-ranging as child welfare, policing and justice systems, natural-resource management, cultural stewardship, land ownership, tribal enterprises, housing, and financial education. 

Jorgensen is a co-author of Structuring Sovereignty: Constitutions of Native Nations (UCLA AIS Press 2014) and The State of the Native Nations: Conditions under US Policies of Self-Determination (Oxford University Press 2008); editor and co-author of Indigenous Justice: New Tools, Approaches and Spaces (Palgrave Macmillan 2018) and of Rebuilding Native Nations: Strategies for Governance and Development (University of Arizona Press 2007); lead author of the US Treasury Department’s two-part Access to Credit and Capital in Native Communities reports (2016, 2017); and USA senior editor of the International Indigenous Policy Journal. She co-founded the University of Arizona Indigenous Governance Program. Jorgensen received her BA in economics from Swarthmore College, MA in human sciences from the University of Oxford, and MPP in international development and PhD in political economics from Harvard University.