Yanna Yannakakis, chair of the department of history at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has received two national awards for her book, Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico (Duke University Press, 2023). She was awarded the Peter Gonville Stein Book Award from the American Society for Legal History and the Friedrich Prize in Latin American and Caribbean History from the American Historical Association.
An ethnohistorian, Dr. Yannakakis centers her research on legal history, with a focus on how Mexico’s Indigenous peoples used colonial institutions and knowledge as a resource for their own ends. In addition to her latest work, she is the author of The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca (Duke University Press, 2008) and co-editor of Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Colonial Mexico and the Andes (Duke University Press, 2014).
Dr. Yannakakis first joined the Emory University faculty in 2009. In addition to her primary appointments in the department of history and the Latin American and Caribbean studies program, she holds an affiliation with the graduate program in Hispanic studies. Prior to her tenure with Emory, she was an assistant professor of history at Montana State University for six years.
An Ivy League graduate, Dr. Yannakakis holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania.