Sven Beckertis Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University, where he researches and teaches the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on the history of capitalism, including its economic, social, political and transnational dimensions. He recently published Empire of Cotton: A Global History, the first global history of the nineteenth century’s most important commodity.... Read more about Sven Beckert
Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
Christine Desanis the author of Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2014), a book arguing that capitalism took shape when societies radically transformed the way they engineered money, adopting bank-issued currency as their public medium and appointing private investors as experts in money creation. More generally, Desan takes a “constitutional approach” to money, exposing and exploring the governance project that packages value into a medium that can be mobilized and enforced in legal transactions.... Read more about Christine Desan
