James Montgomery 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. He primarily researches diplomatic and political history. His doctoral dissertation, Footnotes to the Past: The Unrealised Idea of a Latvian-Lithuanian State, 1884–1984, 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. He also researches the history of American football in relation to the Baltic region.

Baxenfield was guest co-editor of the special issue of Acta Historica Tallinnensia, Vol 28, No. 2, “Recognition: de facto and de jure” (2022), for which the co-authored introductory article was awarded second place in the annual Tallinn University Competition for Published Research in the category of Society and Open Governance. In 2022, he 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.

Baxenfield is a member of AABS, the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA), and the Professional Football Researchers Association (PFRA). He completed an MA in Comparative History of Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe at Central European University, Hungary.