Peter Guardino received his B.A. in 1985, his M.A. in 1986, and his Ph.D. in 1992 from the University of Chicago. He joined Indiana University’s (IU) faculty in 1993 as an assistant professor of history, and he is currently a professor of history and director of graduate studies in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences. He was named Provost Professor in 2019 and serves as director of the History Honors Program.
Prior to joining the IU faculty, Guardino lectured for a year at Loyola University Chicago. As a leading historian of 18th- and 19th-century Latin America, Guardino's research interests focus on Mexico, Latin America, political culture, and war. As a published author, Guardino's book, “The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War”, has won several awards including the Distinguished Book Award for non-United States History from the Society for Military History in 2019; the Bolton-Johnson Prize from the Conference on Latin American History for the best English-language book on any aspect of Latin American history in 2018; and the Robert M. Utley Book Prize from the Western History Association for the best book published on the military history of the frontier and western North America from prehistory through the 20th century in 2018.
Guardino received a U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship in 2008 to research the Mexican-American war in Mexico, his third Fulbright award of which he received two in 1988. He was also awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers in 1999 and the IU Teaching Excellence Recognition Award in 1997