Michèle Lamont

Michèle Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University.

A cultural and comparative sociologist, she is the author or coauthor of a dozen books and edited volumes and over one hundred articles and chapters on a range of topics including culture and inequality, racism and stigma, academia and knowledge, social change and successful societies, and qualitative methods. She is completing a book, titled Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World, to be published by Simon and Schuster (US) and Penguin (UK) in September 2023. She also co-chaired the advisory board to the 2022 UN Human Development Report, “Uncertain times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a World in Transformation.”

After directing the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University (2014-2021), she now leads its research cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion. Recent honors include a Carnegie Fellowship (2019-2021), a Russell Sage Foundation fellowship (2019-2020), the 2017 Erasmus prize and honorary doctorates from six countries. She served as the 108th President of the American Sociological Association in 2016-2017.