Chairholder of the Global cities Chair [2012-2016]
Richard Sennett is Professor of Sociology at New York University and the London School of Economics. He founded Theatrum Mundi, an international group of artists and researchers working on issues associated with urban cultures. Sociologist and historian of urban 'situations', 'mentalities' and 'morals', he is known worldwide for his work on new capitalism. Richard Sennett is also a novelist and a musician.
Graduating from Harvard University in 1969 (Ph.D.), Richard Sennett founded (in 1968) and co-directed from 1969 to 1974, with Christopher Jencks and Gar Alperowitz, the Cambridge Institute in Cambridge (Massachusetts), a centre for research and forward studies, where Richard Sennett notably directed the Urban Family Study. The goal of this programme, funded by the Ford Foundation, is to study working-class family life.
In 1975, Richard Sennett founded the New York Institute for the Humanities at the University of New York, acting as its first director until 1984.
Between 1989 and 1993, R. Sennett was the chairman for the International Committee on Urban Studies, funded by UNESCO and the Rockefeller Foundation. This committee comprises architects, historians, sociologists and economists and aims to establish links between architectural and urban creation and the social sciences.
His publications include: The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008); The Culture of the New Capitalism (Yale University Press, 2005); Respect in a World of Inequality (W.W. Norton, 2003); Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (W.W. Norton, 1994); The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 1998).
