David Rock (historian)
David Peter Rock is a Latin Americanist historian, who specializes in the history of Argentina. He is a professor at the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
He was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, England and taught briefly in Burnley before studying at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Ph.D in 1971. He worked as a Research Officer at the Institute of Latin American Studies in London from 1970 to 1974. He moved to the U.S. to teach at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was promoted to Professor in 1978. He married Rosalind Farrar in 1968, with whom he had two sons.
He has been described as a "leading scholar in the field" of 19th-century Argentine political history. His history of the country from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries was adjudged as "a comprehensive, clearly written and intelligent account of the evolution of Argentina which will undoubtedly remain the standard work for years to come." Rock's first book, Politics in Argentina, 1890-1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism won the Conference on Latin American History Bolton Prize for the best book in English. He is professor emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
