Conference speakers
and session chairs

Show All Friday 2/13 Saturday 2/14 Session Chair

(Cornell University) Gautam Ahuja is the Eleanora and George Landew Professor of Management at the Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business. He has also served at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan (2001-2017), University of Texas at Austin (1996-2001), and as visiting professor of business administration at Harvard Business School […]

(New York University) Delia Baldassari is the Julius Silver, Roslyn S. Silver, and Enid Silver Winslow Professor in the Department of Sociology at New York University. Professor Baldassarri’s research interests are in the fields of Economic Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Networks, and Analytical Sociology. Her current research projects include a study of the emergence of […]

(Cornell University) Forrest Briscoe is the Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Professor at the Cornell University ILR School. Professor Briscoe’s research has explored how companies and institutions evolve to reflect a changing society, how social movements influence organizations, and how employment practices affect people’s careers and societal inequality. Current research includes the role of activism and […]

(Cornell University) Brett de Bary is a former Director of the Society for the Humanities and founding Director of the Visual Studies Program at Cornell. She is Professor Emerita in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies. Her research interests include modern Japanese fiction and film, the Japanese postmodern, comparative literary theory, translation theory and post-colonial theory, […]

(New York University) Paul DiMaggio is Professor of Sociology at New York University. Professor DiMaggio has researched such topics as the origins and consequences of cultural hierarchy in the United States, the role of social networks in economic exchange, the impact of network externalities on social inequality, and varieties of American nationalism. Current research addresses Americans’ […]

(Johns Hopkins University) Henry Farrell is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute Professor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Previously, he was professor at George Washington University’s Department of Political Science and Elliott School of International Affairs. Professor Farrell works on a variety of topics, including democracy, the politics of […]

(Harvard University) Sir Oliver Hart is currently the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1993. He is the 2016 co-recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Hart’s research centers on the roles that ownership structure and contractual arrangements […]

(Lund University) Håkan Holm is Professor of Economics at Lund University. Professor Holm’s research is mainly focused on experimental economics and behavioral economics. Currently, he uses experimental methods in the study of the behavior of CEOs in China in terms of how they make decisions that reflect trust, reciprocity, risk-taking, and generosity. He also researches […]

(Columbia University) Paul Ingram is the Kravis Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School. His research has been published in more than one hundred articles, book chapters and books, covering topics such as Organization and Management Theory, Strategy, and Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Professor Ingram’s current research examines the intersection between culture and […]

(Stanford University) Margaret Levi is Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Faculty Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute, and co-director of Ethics, Society and Technology, Stanford University. Her […]

(Cornell University) Victor Nee is the Frank and Rosa Rhodes Professor of Economic Sociology at Cornell University, Director of the Economic Sociology Lab, and Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society. He has written widely on the new institutionalism in economic and organizational sociology with research focuses on immigration and assimilation, […]

(Cornell University) Shaun Nichols is Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences in Philosophy at Cornell University. His work focuses on the philosophy of cognitive science, with most research concerning the psychological foundations of philosophical thought. Recently Professor Nichols has been drawing on learning theory to try to understand how people acquire philosophically significant concepts and […]

(University of Hong Kong) Kai Quek is Associate Professor of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. He studies strategic interactions in international relations, with a focus on US-China interactions and special interests in state-to-state signaling, the dynamics of deescalation, and the origins of collective beliefs such as nationalism. Prior research on […]

(Princeton University) Eldar Shafir is the Class of 1987 Professor in Behavioral Science and Public Policy at Princeton University. His main areas of interest include reasoning, judgment, and decision-making, and issues related to behavioral economics, with an emphasis on descriptive studies of how people make judgments and decisions in situations of conflict and uncertainty. Most […]

(University of Pennsylvania) Duncan Watts is the Stevens University Professor, the twenty-third Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Director of the Computational Social Science Lab. Professor Watts’s research focuses on social and organizational networks, collective dynamics of human systems, web-based experiments, and analysis of large-scale digital data, including the production, […]

(CSES and McKinsey & Co) Sirui Wang is a senior data scientist at McKinsey & Co. and a former undergraduate research assistant and current Research Fellow of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society. His published research focuses on network rewiring, knowledge spillover, and innovation activity among startup businesses using novel data methods […]

(Lund University) Erik Wengström is Professor of Economics at Lund University and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Hanken School of Economics. Wengström’s research covers a wide range of topics related to how people behave in economic, financial and health contexts. He investigates how incentives, social concerns, and cognitive processes shape people’s choices and preferences. He uses […]

(Russell Sage Foundation) Bruce Western is President of the Russell Sage Foundation. He was previously the Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice at Columbia University (2018-2024), professor of sociology and the Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice Policy at Harvard University (2007-2018), and professor of sociology at Princeton University (1993-2007). He is a sociologist of […]