Craig Calhoun

Craig Jackson Calhoun
Calhoun at the London School of Economics Library
Born	(1952-06-16) June 16, 1952 (age 64) Watseka, Illinois
Nationality	American
Title	President of the Berggruen Institute, Director of London School of Economics, Global Distinguished Professor of Sociology at New York University
Spouse(s)	Pamela Frances DeLargy
Academic background
Education	D.Phil
Alma mater	Oxford University
Thesis title	Community, class and collective action : popular protest in industrializing England and the theory of working class radicalism
Thesis year	1980
Doctoral advisor	Ronald Max Hartwell
Academic work
Discipline	Sociologist
Sub discipline	Comparative historical sociology
Institutions	London School of Economics, New York University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University
Main interests	Social theory, Social movements, Social change

Craig Calhoun (born 1952) is an American sociologist and the current president of the Berggruen Institute. An advocate of using social science to address issues of public concern, he was the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science from September 2012 until September 2016 when he left to become the first President of the Berggruen Institute. He was previously president of the Social Science Research Council and was University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University and Director of NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge. 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.

Calhoun was born in Watseka, Illinois in 1952. He studied anthropology and cinema at the University of Southern California, (BA, 1972), anthropology and sociology at Columbia University (MA, 1974), and social anthropology at Manchester University (MA, (Econ.), 1975). He received his doctorate in sociology and modern social and economic history from Oxford University in 1980, a student of J.C. Mitchell, Angus MacIntyre, and R.M. Hartwell. 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 moved to NYU in 1996 as Chair of the Department of Sociology in a period of major rebuilding. 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. 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 itself. He was Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol in 2000 and received an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University in Melbourne in 2005.