James Baxenfield

James Montgomery Baxenfield is a Junior Research Fellow and doctoral candidate at Tallinn University, Estonia, currently completing his PhD with the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Art History. His doctoral dissertation—”Footnotes to the Past: The Unrealised Idea of a Latvian-Lithuanian State”—examines notions of establishing a common Latvian-Lithuanian state from the period of national awakenings on the eastern littoral of the Baltic Sea until the final decades of the twentieth century. Baxenfield completed both an MA in History (2012) and an MA in the Comparative History of Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe (2012) at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Baxenfield was guest co-editor of the “Recognition: de facto and de jure” special issue of Acta Historica Tallinnensia (Vol 28, No. 2, 2022). The co-authored introductory article to this special issue, “Precarious Roads to Recognition: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, 1917–1922,” was awarded second place in the annual Tallinn University Competition for Published Research in the category of Society and Open Governance. In 2022, Baxenfield was the recipient of a Baumanis Grant for Creative Research in Baltic Studies from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS). In 2023, he undertook a visiting fellowship at the Herder Institute in Marburg, Germany, and received a Dissertation Grant for Graduate Students from AABS. Since 2024 he has been an Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Baltic Studies.

Baxenfield’s research primarily focuses on marginal, unrealised, and not-yet-realised projects—ideas, institutions, and communities that existed but were never fully established—examined through interdisciplinary lenses. Baxenfield explores how such phenomena contribute to shaping identities, communities, along with other forms of organisation, and how they continue to structure society through transnational circulation and memory. His research primarily focuses on the history of the Baltic nations and the diffusion of American football throughout the eastern Europe. He is a member of AABS, the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH), and the Professional Football Researchers Association (PFRA). He is also the founder and host of the Gridiron Baltic podcast, part of the Sports History Network, a monthly show exploring the past and present of American football in relation to the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian nations, and the Baltic region.