Historian Kenneth Pomeranz elected to British Academy

Historian Kenneth Pomeranz elected to British Academy

Kenneth Pomeranz, University Professor of Modern Chinese History and in the College, has been elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. 

Each year a limited number of new members are elected by current Fellows for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. Corresponding Fellows are academics outside the United Kingdom who have “attained high international standing in any of the branches of study which it is the object of the Academy to promote.”

Pomeranz’s research deals primarily with long-term patterns of economic development and social and environmental change in China. His book, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000), received widespread praise for its insights about the uneven growth of industrialization in Europe and Asia. The volume won the John K. Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association, and shared the World History Association book prize. Pomeranz’s current work continues these efforts to chart China’s distinctive path to modernity. 

The British Academy was established in 1902. In addition to Pomeranz, three current Division of the Social Sciences faculty members have previously been elected Corresponding Fellows: Martha Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics (2008); Lorraine Daston, visiting professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought (2010); and Bernard Wasserstein, Harriet & Ulrich E. Meyer Professor Emeritus of Modern European Jewish History (2012).