Kenneth L. Alford is a professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. After serving almost thirty years on active duty in the United States Army, he retired as a colonel in 2008, when he was hired as a full-time faculty member at BYU. During his military service, Ken served in numerous locations, including West Germany (supporting Pershing nuclear missile units); Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana (supporting Army and Department of Defense schools); West Point, New York (as an instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, and executive officer teaching computer science, information systems engineering, and software engineering first in the Department of Geography and Computer Science and then in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the United States Military Academy); the Pentagon (working in a research and acquisition office); Alexandria, Virginia (managing over $5.6 billion in information technology acquisition contracts); and Washington, DC (as professor and chair of the Strategic Leadership Department at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University).

His current research focuses on Latter-day Saint military service as well as the Hyrum Smith Papers Project. He has published over a hundred peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and has presented at a multitude of professional and academic conferences on a wide variety of topics. His books include Dreams as Revelation (2019), Latter-day Saint Military Chaplains: Development, History, and Ministry (2019), Utah and the American Civil War (2017), An Eye of Faith (2014), Civil War Saints (2012), and Salt Lake City: The Place Which God Prepared (2011). Ken and his wife, Sherilee, have four children and sevent