About
Michèle Lamont is a cultural and comparative sociologist interested in a range of topics including culture and inequality, racism and stigma, academia and knowledge, social change and successful societies, and qualitative methods.
The author of a dozen books and edited volumes and over one hundred articles and chapters, Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies, the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies, and director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She served as the 108th President of the American Sociological Association in 2016-2017 and she chaired the Council for European Studies from 2006-2009. She is also the recipient of the 2017 Erasmus prize for her contributions to the social sciences in Europe and the rest of the world and a 2019 Carnegie fellowship.
She serves on the boards of the American Council of Learned Societies, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.
Awards
- Andrew Carnegie Fellow, 2019
- Erasmus Prize, 2017
- President, American Sociological Association, 2016-2017
- Member, Royal Society of Canada, 2015
- Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, Gouvernement français, 2014
Relevant Publications
Lamont, M. et al. (2016). Getting Respect: Dealing with Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel”. Princeton University Press.
Lamont, M. (2018). Addressing Recognition Gaps: Destigmatization and the Reduction of Inequality. American Sociological Review, 83(3), 419–444.
Lamont, Michèle. (2019). From ‘Having’ to ‘Being’: Self-Worth and the Current Crisis of American Society. The British Journal of Sociology 70 (3), 660-707.
Lamont, M., & Pierson, P. (2019). Inequality Generation and Persistence as Multidimensional Processes: An Interdisciplinary Agenda. Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Science, 148(3).