Allen Isaacman is an American historian specializing in the social history of Southern Africa.
He next studied African History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison under Jan Vansina and Philip D. Curtin, earning an M.A.
From 1978 to 1980, Isaacman was the Chaired Professor of Mozambican History at Eduardo Mondlane University, located in Maputo, Mozambique.
From 1988 to 1998, he served as the Director of MacArthur Interdisciplinary Program on Global Change, Sustainability and Justice at the University of Minnesota and retained that role, from 1998 to 2011, as the program transitioned to become the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC).
His 1972 book, Mozambique: The Africanization of a European Institution, The Zambezi Prazos, 1750-1902, won the Melville J. Herskovits Award as the most distinguished publication on African Studies for the year 1972, while the 2013 book which he coauthored, Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007, won both the Herskovits Prize[4] and the Martin Klein award from the American Historical Association (AHA).