Biography
Fouad Makki is Director of the Polson Institute for Global Development (2019–present) and Associate Professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. He is also a founding board member of Cornell’s Institute for Comparative Modernities.
He teaches and writes about international development, social theory, political economy and the historical sociology of modernity. Trained in the comparative study of society and history at Cornell and Binghamton universities, he works across the disciplinary boundaries of the social sciences. His writings explore questions of empire and nationalism, the postwar development initiative, and the historical sociology of modernity.
Set within a broad comparative framework, his writings explore materials from the history and contemporary politics of social change in Ethiopia and Eritrea where he has conducted research for many years. His publications include Post-Colonial Africa and the World Economy: The Long Waves of Uneven Development in Journal of World-Systems Research (2015) and Reframing Development Theory: The Significance of the Idea of Uneven and Combined Development in Theory and Society (2015).
He has received the CALS Young Faculty Teaching Excellence Award (2010) CALS- Cornell University.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts Independent Major: Comparative Studies in Society and History from Cornell University and a PhD in Sociology from Binghamton University.