Janet Polasky is the author of six prize-winning histories, including most recently, Asylum Between Nations (Yale University Press, 2023), Revolutions without Borders (Yale University Press, 2016), and Reforming Urban Labor (Cornell University Press, 2010). Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the J. William Fulbright Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.

A Presidential Professor of History Emerita at the University of New Hampshire, her teaching has been recognized by the Jean Brierley Teaching Award, the Honors Students' Teaching Award, and the Lindberg Award for Outstanding Scholar-Teacher in the College of Liberal Arts. She received her PhD in History from Stanford University and her BA from Carleton College that honored her with a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2023.

Lifelong Unitarian Universalists, Janet Polasky grew up in the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor and her husband William Lyons in the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists. They are members of South Church, Portsmouth, NH.