Kenneth Robert Maxwell (born 3 February 1941) is a British historian of Iberia and Latin America, educated at St John’s College, Cambridge University, where he studied under Professor Sir Harry Hinsley, Ronald Robinson, Edward Miller, and Jonathan Steinberg (1960-1963).
In 1963, Kenneth Maxwell studied at the University of Madrid and was a Gulbenkian grantee in Lisbon in 1964. In September 1964 he entered the graduate program in Latin American History at Princeton University where his supervisor was Professor Stanley Stein.
He was a Newberry library-Gulbenkian fellow in Chicago (1968-1969). He was appointed an assistant and later an associate professor of Luso-Brazilian history at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. From 1971 until 1972 he was the Herodotus fellow in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Between 1972 and 1975 he remained at the Institute with the support of a Rockefeller Foundation grant in the school of historical studies and between 1974-75 as a joint appointment in the school of historical studies and the newly established school of social sciences. He was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow from 1975-76 (gf.org) He was appointed an associate professor of history at Columbia University (1976-1984) and was the director of the Camões Center at Columbia University from 1988-1999. He was a senior fellow at the Research Institute on International Change at Columbia University from 1978-1992 and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University from 1992-2000. He was the program director of the Tinker Foundation (1979-1983). A long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations for fifteen years he headed its Latin America Studies Program and was the director of studies and vice-president in 1996. He was the first Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Inter-American Affairs (1996-2004). He was the Western Hemisphere book reviewer for Foreign Affairs from 1995 until 2004. His 13 May 2004 resignation from the council and Foreign Affairs involved a major controversy over whether there had been a breach of the so-called "church-state separation" between the council itself and its magazine Foreign Affairs.[1] As of 2004 Maxwell was a professor of History at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, where he established and was the founding director the Brazil Studies Program (2004-2013). He was a weekly columnist for the Folha de São Paulo (2005-2015) and Globo (2015-) and has written for the New York Review of Books and other publications. He was a Visiting associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University (1978–79), a Visiting Professor of History and Latin American Studies at Princeton (1985–86) and a Visiting Professor of History at Yale (1991–92). He donated his collection of books on Brazil, Portugal and Latin America to the Library, St. John's College, Cambridge University. On June 5,2024, The Federal University of Sergipe in Brazil awarded Professor Kenneth Maxwell a doutor honoris causa (Portal UFS httpse://www.ufs.br > conteudo > 74400 - ufs - cocede - doc...) UFS concede Doutor Honoris Causa a Kenneth Maxwell.
Honours:
Grande Cruz, Ordem Nacional do Mérito Científico, Brazil, 1996Commander, Ordem do Rio Branco, Brazil, 1997Grande Oficial, Ordem do Infante D. Henrique, Portugal, 2003John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, 1985–86Luso-American Foundation Fellow, 1986–87Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, 1989-2004Honorary Fellow, Institute of Romance Studies, University of London (1993-)Sócio Correspondente Estrangeiro, Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (1994-)Doutor Honoris Causa, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil (2024).
Board member:
LASPAU (1996-1997)American Portuguese Society, (1979-1997)Tinker Foundation (2002-2008)Americas Watch/Americas (Advisory Board) (1996-Luso-American Foundation, Advisory Council (1996-2000)Spanish Institute (1997-2004)David Rockefeller Center, Harvard University, Advisory Committee (2010)
Consultant
Ford Foundation, Brazil Office, (1985–87)Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington D.C. (1989-1990)Institute for Defense Analysis, Washington, D.C. (1986-1992)Hewlett Foundation. Mexico Program Review (1992)Tinker Foundation (review of Tinker Chairs (1985-1987)
Kenneth Maxwell’s website: https://www.krmaxwell.comKenneth Maxwell: 1941, https://www.encyclopaedia.com> …