Donald Akenson

Donald Harman Akenson (born May 22, 1941, Minneapolis, Minnesota) is a historian and author.

Akenson received his B.A. from Yale University and his doctorate from Harvard University. He is Professor of History at Queen's University and Beamish Research Professor at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool. As of 2007 his work included eighteen non-fiction books, including more than a dozen about Irish history, and five novels. Akenson won the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for God's Peoples (1992) and the Trillium Book Award for Conor: The Biography of Conor Cruise O'Brien (1994). His book on the Bible, Surpassing Wonder (1998), was short-listed for the 1999 Governor General's Award for nonfiction. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Royal Historical Society (UK). He was awarded an honorary doctorate (DLit) by Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand in 2010.