Pekka Hämäläinen (historian)
Pekka Johannes Hämäläinen is a Finnish professor and author of a prize-winning book, The Comanche Empire, 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 at Santa Barbara.Life
Hämäläinen was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland. It wasn't until high school, and an inspiring teacher, that he realized he actually liked 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 moving to Oxford University.
In 2019 Hämäläinen published a book about history of the Lakota beginning in the seventeenth century through the twentieth century.Awards
