Biography

Maya Jasanoff is X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor of Arts and Sciences and Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University and resident faculty at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES). She specializes in the history of the British Empire. She recently completed a book on the life and times of Joseph Conrad as the first author of globalization. The book is called The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. Her first book, Edge of Empire, describes British expansion in India and Egypt through the lives of art collectors, and was awarded the 2005 Duff Cooper Prize. Her 2011 book Liberty’s Exiles offers the first global history of loyalists who fled revolutionary America and resettled in Canada, the Caribbean, Britain, Sierra Leone, and beyond. It received numerous honors including the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Non-Fiction and the George Washington Book Prize.

Jasanoff is a frequent contributor to American and British newspapers and magazines. A 2013 John Simon Guggenheim fellow, she was named Harvard College Professor in 2015 for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Affiliations

• X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor of Arts and Sciences and Coolidge Professor of History, Harvard University
• Resident Faculty & Seminar Co-chair, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University