Craig Calhoun

Craig Jackson Calhoun (born 1952) is an American sociologist who currently serves as the University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University.

He is a strong advocate for applying social science to address issues of public concerns.

Calhoun was born in Watseka, Illinois, on June 16, 1952.

He studied anthropology and cinema at the University of Southern California (B.A., 1972), anthropology and sociology at Columbia University (M.A., 1974), and social anthropology at Manchester University (M.A., 1975).

He taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1977 to 1996.

There he was also Dean of the Graduate School and founding Director of the University Center for International Studies.

He received his D.Phil. in sociology and modern social and economic history from University of Oxford in 1980, where he was a student of J.Clyde Mitchell, Angus Macintyre, and Ronald Max Hartwell.

He moved to NYU in 1996 as Chair of the Department of Sociology in a period of major rebuilding.

From 1999 to 2012 Calhoun was President of the Social Science Research Council.

At the SSRC Calhoun emphasized the public contributions of social science.

He was the Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol in 2000, received an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University in Melbourne in 2005, and also received an honorary doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam, in 2013.

Calhoun spent portions of his early years in states like Kentucky and Illinois due to his father's role as a Protestant minister.

This exposure to various communities and settings provided him with diverse experiences.

Discussions during this time touched upon Western history, religion, and the Bible.

His father, who held views on church unity, frequently discussed the differences between religious denominations.

Calhoun's formative years coincided with significant societal events, including the Civil Rights Movement.

In his academic pursuits, Calhoun attended institutions including the University of Southern California, Princeton, Manchester University, and Oxford.

His studies covered anthropology, sociology, political philosophy, and modern social and economic history.

While he primarily focused on sociology, his research spanned various topics, from democracy and social movements to the evolution of capitalism.

After September 11, 2001 he launched an initiative on "Real Time Social Science" which included an essay forum that attracted more than one million readers.

His views are explained in his essay "Towards a More Public Social Science", which first appeared in the SSRC's 2004 "President's Report" and has been translated, reprinted and widely circulated on the web.

He left for Columbia in 2006 but returned to NYU as Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge (IPK), which promotes collaborations among academics from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and between academics and working professionals.

With Richard Sennett he co-founded NYLON, an interdisciplinary working seminar for graduate students in New York and London who bring ethnographic and historical research to bear on politics, culture, and society.

This continued with work on the Privatization of Risk, Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences Program, and now Haiti, Now and Next (examining the impact of the 2010 earthquake on Haiti's social and political future).

His conversations with Paul Price have received wide circulation, podcast as Societas.

Calhoun served as the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from September 2012 until September 2016 and continues to hold the title of Centennial Professor of Sociology at LSE.

Before this tenure at LSE, Calhoun led the Social Science Research Council, and held the position of University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University (NYU).

He was also the Director of NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge.

After LSE, he became the first president of the Berggruen Institute, where he now serves as a senior advisor to the Berggruen Prize.

In September 2012 he became the Director and President of the London School of Economics.

Calhoun has also taught at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, University of Asmara, University of Khartoum, University of Oslo, and Oxford.

As the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science Calhoun was in the academic year 2012-13 the beneficiary of "one of the biggest increases in overall pay and benefits" in the British higher education sector.

As Director, Calhoun was very successful in raising funds for the LSE, including millions from the Marshall Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, and many other donors.

Also during his tenure, LSE begun work on a new Global Centre for Social Sciences, and rose significantly in global university rankings, rising from 71st to 35th best university in the world between 2014 and 2015 in QS World University Rankings.

His research took him to different parts of the world, and he showed particular interest in the workers' movements of 18th and 19th-century England.

Calhoun is married to Pam F. DeLargy, a specialist in public health and population studies, who transitioned back to academia after two decades in international development and humanitarian aid.

DeLargy encompasses areas like migration, gender relations, and reproductive health.

At UNFPA, DeLargy played a role in emphasizing the needs of women and young individuals during emergencies.

For served for the U.N. in Eritrea, Sudan, and Ethiopia heading humanitarian response programmes of UNFPA.

Before her tenure at Arizona State University, she was the Senior Advisor to Peter Sutherland, the U.N. Special Representative for Migration.