Michèle Lamont, Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, has been awarded the 2017 Erasmus Prize by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation for her social science research on the relationship between knowledge, power and diversity.
Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University, the Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and the Co-director of the Successful Societies Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She also serves as the 108th President of the American Sociological Association in 2016-2017.
An internationally influential sociologist, Lamont has devoted her academic career to researching how cultural conditions shape inequality and social exclusion, and how marginalized groups find ways to preserve their dignity and self-worth. Her research interests centre on how class and ethnicity determine the way people view reality and on how the wellbeing of minorities influences the wellbeing of wider society.
“Professor Lamont has long been a champion of diversity and the ways we can come together to build healthy, engaged and resilient societies. Across Canada and around the globe, this knowledge is needed now more than ever,” says Stephen Toope, Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs. “I’m so pleased to see Professor Lamont’s exceptional contributions being recognized with one of Europe’s most distinguished prizes, and I wholeheartedly congratulate her on her success.”
Lamont began her academic career at Stanford and Princeton universities before moving to Harvard University in 2003. She has written dozens of books and articles on culture, social inequality and exclusion; racism and ethnicity; institutions and science. She was appointed as a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs in 2016.
Presented by His Majesty the King of the Netherlands, the Erasmus Prize is awarded annually to a person or institution that has made an exceptional contribution to the humanities, social sciences or arts. The prize will be presented in November 2017.
February 22, 2017
