Divisional news
Nobel Prize in Economics goes to Lars Peter Hansen, Delhi Center grand opening, three new departmental chairs named, nine new faculty members join the SSD, and more.
Christopher Dingwall, AM'06, a PhD candidate in the history department, has curated an exhibition titled Race and the Design of the American Life: African Americans in 20th-Century Commercial Art. The exhibit, which runs through January 4, 2014, at the Special Collections Research Center Exhibition Gallery, examines how the graphic design of food packaging, print advertisements, and toys have shaped the relationship between race and consumption. Judith Farquhar, AM'75, AM'79, PhD'86 (social sciences), the Max Palevsky Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College, was an organizer of the workshop "History, Philology, and the Nation in the Chinese Humanities" held in September at the University's Center in Beijing. The workshop, attended by researchers in the China-oriented humanities, marked the first stage of planning for three years of academic exchange sponsored by the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. The first focus of the exchange will examine the scholarly movement Xin Guoxue, or New National Studies, which will help sharpen Western researchers' understanding of humanities and social scientific research in China today.  

Nobel Prize in Economics goes to Lars Peter Hansen

Lars Peter Hansen, the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, Statistics, and the College, received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2013 (along with Eugene F. Fama, MBA'63, PhD'64, the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, and Robert J. Shiller of Yale University) for "empirical analysis of asset prices." This research helps explain how and why the prices of stocks and bonds change over time. Hansen developed a statistical method for testing rational theories of asset pricing like those advanced by Fama and Shiller. "In their work, Gene Fama and Lars Hansen have demonstrated the University's mission to address the complex challenges facing society with innovative scholarship. In doing so, they have helped shape the study of economics and the nature of today's financial markets," said Robert J. Zimmer, president of the University. Hansen is research director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. A leading expert in economic dynamics, Hansen's statistical assessments of economic models and his research examining the connection between the macroeconomy and financial markets "go a long way toward explaining asset prices," the Nobel announcement stated. At an October news conference, Hansen said his UChicago colleagues were essential in guiding his approach to research. "This environment here really is something special." From his mentors and colleagues in the Department of Economics, he learned that "economics is supposed to do something—it's supposed to explain the world." Hansen joined the economics faculty in 1981 and has served as director of graduate studies and as department chair. His recent work focuses on models that incorporate ambiguities, beliefs, and skepticism of consumers and investors; specifically, he explores how these models can explain economic and financial data to understand the consequences of policy options.   

Delhi Center grand opening

The University's Center in Delhi, India, officially opens in March 2014, announced University President Robert J. Zimmer in October. The center, which represents all graduate divisions, professional schools, and the undergraduate College, was first proposed in 2010 by a faculty committee chaired by Dipesh Chakrabarty, the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations. With the center, the University hopes to open the campus and faculty to new insights through scholarly collaboration with Indian academics and institutions as well as through public programming such as lectures, exhibitions, and short-term courses relevant for business and government leaders in India.  

New chairs

The division has named three new departmental chairs. In political science, Cathy Cohen follows Bernard Harcourt. Cohen, the David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science, has also served as deputy provost for graduate education and Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. She's written two books: Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2010) and The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1999). Her general field of specialization is American politics, while her research interests include African American politics; women and politics; lesbian and gay politics; and social movements. In anthropology, Stephan Palmié takes on the role previously held by Alan Kolata. Palmié, professor of anthropology and of social sciences in the College, conducts ethnographic and historical research on Afro-Caribbean cultures, with an emphasis on Afro-Cuban religious formations and their relations to the history and cultures of a wider Atlantic world. He also studies practices of historical representation and knowledge production; systems of slavery and unfree labor; constructions of race and ethnicity; conceptions of embodiment and moral personhood; medical anthropology; and the anthropology of food and cuisine. In psychology, Amanda Woodward, the William S. Gray Professor of Psychology, succeeds Susan Levine. Woodward sits on the board of directors of the Cognitive Development Society and the executive board of the International Society on Infant Studies. Her research, which includes infant cognition, social cognitive development, imitation, and theory of mind, has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.  

New faculty

This year the Social Sciences Division welcomed nine new faculty members. History Brodwyn Fischer, a historian of cities, citizenship, law, migration, race, and social inequality in Brazil and Latin America, joined the department as professor of Latin American history. Her book A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in 20th Century Rio de Janeiro (Stanford University Press, 2008) won numerous awards, including the Social Science History Association's President's Book Award and the Conference on Latin American History's Warren Dean Memorial Prize. She has received grants from the Fulbright Commission, the Fulbright-Hays Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is working on a book about the rise of social and economic inequality in the century following Brazilian abolition in 1888. She earned her PhD from Harvard. Before coming to Chicago, she taught at Amherst College and Northwestern University. Eleonory Gilburd, AB'98 (History), has joined the department as an assistant professor after serving as an assistant professor of history in Russian and Slavic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Gilburd studies Russian, Soviet, and modern European history as well as cross-cultural interactions and translation in cultural history. She is working on a book about the 1950s and 1960s as a pivotal chapter in the history of Russia's Westernization. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Johanna Ransmeier joins the department as an assistant professor after serving as an assistant professor in the department of history at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Earning her PhD from Yale, she is a historian of modern China, specializing in the late Qing and republican periods. Ransmeier's research describes forms of human trafficking, household bondage, and domestic slavery in China during this time. Michael Rossi, a historian of medicine and science in the United States from the 19th century to the present, joins the department as an assistant professor. He focuses on the historical and cultural metaphysics of the body, examining how people at different times understood concepts such as beauty, truth, and falsehood. Before joining Chicago, Rossi was a postdoctoral fellow in the Groupe Histoire des sciences de l'homme et de la société at the Ecole normale supérieure de Cachan in France. He received his PhD from the MIT. Psychology Daniel Casasanto joined the department as an assistant professor. He received his PhD from MIT and served as an assistant professor by courtesy in the psychology department at Stony Brook University, New York. In 2013 he received the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformational Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science. Casasanto, whose research interests include language and thought, culture and cognition, and mind and body, runs the blog Malleable Mind for Psychology Today. Sociology Marco Garrido, who received his PhD from the University of Michigan, will join the department as an assistant professor in 2014. His areas of interest include urban, global, and political sociology; social movements; sociological theory; and qualitative methods. This academic year he is doing his postdoctorate at the Asia Research Institute in the National University of Singapore. Economics Michael Greenstone, U-High'87, an expert on energy and environmental economics at MIT, has been appointed professor of economics and director of the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC) beginning in July. At EPIC, a joint project of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, Greenstone will lead a growing research and training effort focused on the economic and social consequences of energy policies. Greenstone, MIT's 3M professor of environmental economics since 2006, is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served as the chief economist for the Obama administration's Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2010. A past editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics, Greenstone also has been a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board's Environmental Economics Advisory Committee. Greenstone's research focuses on the costs and benefits of environmental quality and the role of environmental quality in fostering growth in developing countries. He has worked extensively on the Clean Air Act and examined its effects on air quality, manufacturing activity, housing prices, and infant mortality. "In his prolific and cutting-edge research, Michael has revolutionized the way we think about energy economics," said John List, chair of the Department of Economics. His recent studies include a report on the effect of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy in China. In 2004 Greenstone received the 12th annual Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Best Paper in the field of health economics. Greenstone earned a BA from Swarthmore College and a PhD in economics from Princeton University. Stéphane Bonhomme has joined the faculty as a professor. Bonhomme, who earned his PhD from the University of Paris, was a professor at the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies in Madrid. The European Research Council gave him a starting grant, beginning in January 2011, for his project Estimation of Nonlinear Models with Unobserved Heterogeneity. His research focuses on labor economics, microeconometrics, and econometric theory. Felix Tintelnot will join the department as an assistant professor in 2014, after finishing a one-year International Economics Section Fellowship at Princeton University. Tintelnot earned his PhD from Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on international trade and industrial organization. Magne Mogstad joins the department as an assistant professor in 2014, coming from the University College London, where he is an assistant professor of economics. His areas of interest include public economics, labor economics, and applied econometrics. He received his PhD from the University of Oslo.   

Faculty book

John List, the Homer J. Livingston Professor of Economics, coauthored The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life (PublicAffairs) in October with former Chicago Booth faculty member Uri Gneezy. With a foreword written by Freakonomics coauthor and William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics Steven Levitt, the book analyzes results from the authors' randomized experiments to examine how incentives work. The research, the authors argue, could be used to solve problems such as discrimination against the disabled, violence in inner-city schools, and gender inequality in the workplace.  

Faculty on the road

See Social Sciences Division faculty speak in your city: visit our events page for more information. Sunday, February 23, 2014: Tampa Bay, Florida "Chicago Blues: A Social History," with Michael Dietler, Professor in the Department of Anthropology Sunday, April 6, 2014: Houston, Texas "Civic Gifts: Benevolence and the Making of the American Nation-State," with Elisabeth Clemens, AM'85, PhD'90, the William Rainey Harper Professor of Sociology and the College and Chair of the Department of Sociology Sunday, April 6, 2014: Los Angeles, California "The Civilizational Roots of Indian Democracy," with Dipesh Chakrabarty, the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations Thursday, April 10, 2014: Mexico City, Mexico "Are Some Cities' Ghettos More Punishing than Others?," with Mario Luis Small, Professor in the Department of Sociology and Dean of the Social Sciences Division Thursday, April 24, 2014: Washington, DC "Are Some Cities' Ghettos More Punishing than Others?," with Mario Luis Small, Professor in the Department of Sociology and Dean of the Social Sciences Division Sunday, May 4, 2014: Seattle, Washington "Medieval History Meets Geopolitics: Judaism, Christianity, Islam," with David Nirenberg, Director of the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society and the Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor in the Committee on Social Thought Monday, May 5, 2014: Vancouver, British Columbia "Medieval History Meets Geopolitics: Judaism, Christianity, Islam," with David Nirenberg, Director of the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society and the Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor Committee on Social Thought