Biography

Tomas Jaehn specializes in interdisciplinary subjects of the American West and the United States, and covers rare materials from around the world. Before joining CULLS in 2016, he worked at the Idaho State Historical Library and Archives in Boise, Stanford University Libraries in California, and at the New Mexico History Museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library in Santa Fe. He attended universities in Germany and the United States and holds a PhD in history from the University of New Mexico. He is the author of Germans in the Southwest, 1850–1920 (University of New Mexico Press, 2005) and edited the German edition of Jedediah Smith: Durch Amerikas Südwesten, 1826-1828 (2015).  Most recently, he spent four weeks in Lithuania on a J. William Fulbright scholarship to assist the Kelmės krašto muziejus with redesigning its North America exhibition and to lecture about New Mexico and the West at public libraries and the University of Vilnius.

Tomas Jaehn is the Subject Specialist for German, U.S. History, and Special Collections.