Historian John Wunder named docent at Finland's Renvall Institute

Released on 12/15/2004, at 2:00 AM
Office of University Communications
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Lincoln, Neb., December 15th, 2004 —

John Wunder, professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been honored with a permanent appointment as a docent of the Renvall Institute at the University of Helsinki in Finland.

As the first American invited to be a docent in the institute's North American Studies program, Wunder will teach specialized courses for undergraduates and graduate students. The appointment will also allow him to work on a project that involves the comparative treaty history of indigenous peoples in the world, including the Samis (or Lapps) in the arctic regions of northern Finland. He said he hopes to go to Finland in late spring.

Wunder has been a Fulbright scholar to Finland and held the bicentennial chair in 1995-96 at the University of Helsinki. He has returned on a number of occasions, having been invited to be the official opponent for dissertation defenses, to serve on professorial search committees, to keynote conferences, write for Finnish periodicals and teach in the Renvall Institute. Several Finnish graduate have studied history at UNL as a result.

The University of Helsinki is one of the premier universities in northern Europe and the European Union, as well as one of the oldest. The Renvall Institute is a department that includes all of the interdisciplinary and area studies programs within the university.

CONTACT: John Wunder, Professor, History, (402) 472-3254