Sven Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of American History at Harvard University, where he teaches the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, and global history. With Christine A. Desan, he is the co-director of the Program on the Study of Capitalism at Harvard University. He was an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow in 2008. He was a Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies Fellow. He was a New York Public Library Fellow. He is a Guggenheim Fellow. Education He studied history, economics and political science at the University of Hamburg, Germany and then graduated from Columbia University with a PhD in History. Career In 2003, Beckert worked at the University of Konstanz as a Humboldt Research Fellow. Works He is the author of Empire of Cotton: A Global History (2014), which won the 2015 Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for History. The New York Times called it "one of the ten best books of 2015." Economic historian Peer Vries wrote that it was "a must read for every historian interested in global history, but in my view it is better as a story on cotton than as an analysis of capitalism." Other economic historians have criticized the book. Comaroff petition In February 2022, Beckert was one of 38 Harvard faculty to sign an open letter published in The Harvard Crimson defending Professor John Comaroff after a university investigation found that he had violated the Harvard's sexual and professional conduct policies. The letter stated, in part, that "We the undersigned know John Comaroff to be an excellent colleague, advisor, and committed university citizen.” Four days later, after three graduate students filed a lawsuit with detailed allegations of Comaroff's actions and the university's failure to respond, Beckert was one of several signatories to say that they wished to retract their signatures. Books Journal articles Edited volumes References External links "Beckert tracks cotton trail", Harvard Gazette, Living people Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Harvard University faculty University of Hamburg alumni 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Year of birth missing (living people) Bancroft Prize winners American male non-fiction writers