Historian Kenneth Maxwell was born on 3 February 1941 in Wellington, Somerset, in the south of England. He graduated in History (B.A. and M.A.) from St John's College, University of Cambridge, in 1963, before pursuing an M.A. and a Ph.D. at Princeton University in the United States. Maxwell has taught at Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Kansas. At Harvard, he was a member of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), where he created the Brazilian Studies Programme, which he directed from 2006 to 2008. In New York, he served as director of the Latin America Programme at the Council on Foreign Relations (1989-2004) and founded and led the Camões Centre (1988-1999) at Columbia University. Today, the Kenneth Maxwell Senior Thesis Prize, awarded to the best theses in Brazilian Studies by DRCLAS, bears his name.

Maxwell's interest in South American history, and Brazilian history in particular, began during his time at Cambridge. In his youth, he was introduced to Rio de Janeiro through Marcel Camus’ film Black Orpheus (1951), which offered him a “vision of paradise” — to borrow a phrase from Sérgio Buarque de Holanda — an idyllic image that stood in stark contrast to the bleakness of post-war England and the austere environment at Cambridge, where discussions about European spaces were rare, and those about non-European spaces almost non-existent. From then on, Brazil became central to Maxwell’s research and is now a cornerstone of his work.

Maxwell's relationship with Portugal is closely tied to his interest in Brazil. Given the deep historical connections between the two countries, it is difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand Brazilian history without relating it to Portuguese history. His first encounter with Portugal occurred in the 1960s. After attending some classes in Madrid, he travelled to Lisbon to learn Portuguese and deepen his connection with Brazil During this time, he was granted a meeting with the director of the international division of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian [Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation], who offered him a scholarship. This funding allowed Maxwell to stay in Lisbon, where he learned the language and became familiar with Portuguese historiography.

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