Alan Gibson is a Professor of Political Science at California State University, Chico. Gibson earned his B.A. from Western Kentucky University in 1984, his MA in American Studies from Notre Dame in 1987, and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1993.

Gibson's primary research interests are focused on the political thought of James Madison and the study of the American Founding. Gibson is the author of Interpreting the Founding: Guide to the Enduring Debates Over the Origins and Foundations of the American Republic (Lawrence:

University Press of Kansas, 2006) and Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, Spring, 2007).

He has also published articles in Polity, History of Political Thought, The Review of Politics, and The Political Science Reviewer. Gibson is currently writing a book on the political thought of James Madison, especially Madison's famous argument for an extended republic.

Gibson has been a John Carter Brown fellow at Brown University, a Francis Hiatt fellow at the American Antiquarian Association, a Robert Middlekauf fellow at the Huntington Library, a fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies in Charlottesville, Virginia, a visiting fellow in research at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University for 2005-2006, and a NEH "We the People" fellow in 2007-2008.

He has lectured for the AIHE across the country. "The American Institute for History Education," Gibson believes, "affords Professors like myself with a unique opportunity to work with some of America's brightest educators. Since I began teaching in the AIHE program, I have been uniformly impressed with the quality of the teachers and other participants in the conferences, the professionalism of the staff of AIHE, and the quality of instruction that I have seen delivered by fellow instructors."