Paul K. Longmore, Professor of History and Director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, specializes in Early American history and the history of people with disabilities. He earned his Ph.D. at the Claremont Graduate School and his B.A. and M.A. at Occidental College.

Longmore's book The Invention of George Washington (University of California Press, 1988; paper University Press of Virginia, 1998) is a study of Washington as a political actor and conscious shaper of his public image. Longmore has also written articles in scholarly journals and newspapers on themes related to Early American history and to the history of people with disabilities and their contemporary civil rights struggle. With Lauri Umansky, he co-edited The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York University Press, 2001), an anthology of essays, and is co-editing a book series, The History of Disability, for NYU Press. A collection of his writings entitled Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability was published by Temple University Press in 2003.

He has taught at Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and the California Polytechnic University at Pomona.

San Francisco State University's Institute on Disability is a pioneering multidisciplinary research, curriculum-development, and community-service program. From 1983 to 1986, Longmore served as the administrator of the Program in Disability and Society at the University of Southern California, one of the first disability studies projects in the United States.

Longmore was featured in the historical documentary film “George Washington: The Man Who Wouldn't Be King” on the PBS series The American Experience. He has been interviewed regarding disability-related issues on ABC's Nightline, ABC's World News Tonight, NBC's Today, and National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, as well as in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, McCall's, and TV Guide.

He has obtained grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct a Summer Institute on Disability Studies, the Mount Vernon Ladies Association for research on George Washington, the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research to examine the impact of disability studies curricula, and the U.S. Department of Education to direct a mentoring project to facilitate the transition of students with disabilities from college to careers. He has also received an Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at Stanford University, a Huntington Library Research Fellowship, and an H. B Earhart Foundation Research Fellowship.