James Russell grew up in Connecticut and lives in Berkeley, California. His paternal ancestors arrived in the seventeenth century to New England from England and Scotland. His maternal ancestors immigrated from Bohemia to Manhattan by 1880. He has served as a director of the California Genealogical Society. His research focuses on New England, New York, Japan and Central Europe. He has done extensive primary research in all these places and attended institutes at SLIG, IGHR, Gen-Fed and GRIP. He reads Czech, German, Russian, French, Japanese and Latin. He has a BSFS (Georgetown), an MA in Slavic linguistics (Chicago), and a PhD in anthropology (London – SOAS). He is very interested in DNA-related issues and administers two surname projects for FTDNA.
Courses
- 2025 – Course Six- Japanese Genealogy: From Japan to the Americas
- 2025 – Course Twelve – DNA as Genealogical Evidence: Advanced Case Studies
- 2023 – Course Twelve – DNA as Genealogical Evidence (Advanced)
