Pekka Hämäläinen (historian)

Pekka Johannes Hämäläinen (born 1967, Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish professor of history. His prize-winning book, The Comanche Empire, was published in 2008.

Since 2012, he has been the Rhodes Professor of American History at the University of Oxford. He was formerly in the History Department at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Life

Hämäläinen was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland. It was only in secondary school that an inspiring teacher made him realize that he enjoyed history, his core interest being Native American history. At university, Hämäläinen majored in history and trained to become a secondary history teacher. After finishing his M.A., he began work on his Ph.D.

He graduated from University of Helsinki, with a Ph.D. in 2001. He taught at Texas A&M University from 2002 to 2004. His work has appeared in the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, William and Mary Quarterly, and the Western Historical Quarterly. He taught in the History Department at University of California, Santa Barbara, before he moved to Oxford University.

In 2019, Hämäläinen published a book about the history of the Lakota people from the 17th-20th centuries.

Awards

• 2009 Bancroft Prize
• 2008 Kate Brocks Bates Award
• 2009 Merle Curti Award
• 2009 Cundill Prize, runner-up
• 2009 Caughey Western History Association Prize

Works

• The Comanche Empire. New Haven, CT; Yale University Press. 2008. 512 pages. ISBN 978-0300151176.
• When Disease Makes History: Epidemics and Great Historical Turning Points. Helsinki, Finland; Yliopistopaino Printing Services. 2006. 314 pages. ISBN 978-9515706409.
• with Benjamin H. Johnson. Major Problems in the History of North American Borderlands. Boston, MA; Cengage Learning. 2011. 568 pages. ISBN 978-0495916925.
• Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2019. 542 pages. ISBN 978-0300215953.