Biography

Craig Calhoun is the President of the Berggruen Institute of Los Angeles and Beijing, which brings thinkers and policy-makers together to address basic intellectual and policy issues in a world of great transformations. Until 2016, he was Director (President) of the London School of Economics, and previously President of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) University Professor of the Social Sciences at NYU and founding Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge, Professor of Sociology at Columbia, and Professor of Sociology and History, Dean of the Graduate School and founding Director of the University Center for International Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. He has also taught at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the Universities of Asmara, Khartoum, Oslo, and Oxford. Calhoun's empirical research has ranged from Britain and France to China and Africa. His study of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 resulted in the prize-winning book, Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (California, 1994). Among his other works are Does Capitalism Have a Future? (Oxford 2015), Roots of Radicalism (Chicago 2012), Nations Matter (Routledge 2007), Nationalism (Minnesota, 1997), Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference (Blackwell, 1995), and several edited collections including Habermas and the Public Sphere (MIT, 1992), Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics (Minnesota, 1997), Understanding September 11th (New Press, 2002), Lessons of Empire (New Press, 2005), Knowledge Matters (Columbia 2011), and Possible Futures (NYU 2012). He was also editor in chief of the Oxford Dictionary of the Social Sciences. In well over a hundred articles, he has also addressed the impact of technological change; the organization of community life; the relationship among tort law, risk, and business organizations; the anthropological study of education, kinship, and religion; and problems in contemporary globalization. Calhoun's work has been translated into twenty languages.