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, Lamont is the author or coauthor of four books and the editor of a dozen collective volumes/journal issues 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. Her new book, Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World, will be published by Simon and Schuster (US) and Penguin (UK) in September 2023. She 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 at Harvard University from 2014 to 2021, she 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. Lamont served as the 108th President of the American Sociological Association in 2016-2017.  

Updated July 2023