Sven Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of American History at Harvard University, where he teaches the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, and global history. With Christine A. Desan, he is the co-director of the Program on the Study of Capitalism at Harvard University. He was an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow in 2008. He was a Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies Fellow.He was a New York Public Library Fellow.He is a Guggenheim Fellow.