Michèle Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University. She obtained a BA and an MA in political science from the University of Ottawa in the late seventies before earning a doctorate in sociology at the Université de Paris. She went on to post-doctoral studies at Stanford University and then was appointed to her first faculty position at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 2003, she has been a full professor at Harvard University.
Professor Lamont is a cultural and comparative sociologist who studies culture and inequality, racism and stigma, academia and knowledge, social change and successful societies, and qualitative methods. Her academic interests focus on shared concepts of worth and excellence, and their impact on hierarchies in a number of social domains. She has authored a dozen books and edited volumes, as well as over a hundred articles and chapters on a range of topics. Her most recent publications include the coauthored book Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel and a special issue of Social Science & Medicine on “Mutuality, Health Promotion, and Collective Cultural Change.”
Michèle Lamont is director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and co-director of the Successful Societies Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. A past chair of the Council for European Studies, she served as president of the American Sociological Association, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize for her contributions to the social sciences in Europe and the rest of the world. Other recent honours include: election as a member of the Royal Society of Canada; the Gutenberg Research Award, Johannes Gutenberg University; and induction as a Chevalier of the Order of the Academic Palms, France.