The project
What is the relationship between geographical anchoring (place), and how people have thought about international and global economic inequality? An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015 is a qualitative, humanistic research project that applies a transnational perspective on the intellectual history of inequality. We will investigate four countries (Argentina, Ghana, India, USA), four clusters of public intellectuals (such as economists, sociologists, philosophers, politicians and historians), combined with field studies. How has international economic inequality been conceptualized? What were the dominant past expectations for the future of international inequality? To which extent was economic inequality thought to be legitimate, just, useful?
The overall thesis of this project is that the importance of place for inequality thinking tended to shrink during the period from 1960 to 2015. The aim is to contribute with a new transnational knowledge about the intellectual history of inequality in different geographical and cultural contexts. We will turn the map of the world upside down: what does international inequality look like if you come from Ghana or Argentina compared to the US? The project will investigate links, differences and similarities between different intellectual traditions, as well as the circulation of inequality concepts and knowledge across countries. In collaboration with international colleagues, it aspires to create a unique transcultural and multi-linguistic knowledge about inequality concepts, contributing the fields of global conceptual and intellectual history, as well as to inequality studies more broadly.
Today, global inequality is one of the major challenges facing the world community. In 2015, the United Nations adopted a new set of world goals, including bringing down inequality (both within and between nations). By looking more deeply into the cultural and intellectual historical background, we as researches hope to deliver important inputs to these debates. For example, the project can help shed light on the cultural and ideological aspects of how relatively poor countries deal with high national inequality. At bottom, our interest springs from a relatively common and deep concern of the age we live in: why are our life opportunities so unequal in the (global) world we live in?
Take a look at our calendar
Researchers
Christian Olaf Christiansen
Christian is the principal investigator of ‘An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015’. His primary country of study will be the United States. He is an intellectual historian who focuses mainly on historicizing issues of pressing contemporary concern, such as ideas about the role of business in society, human rights, poverty alleviation at the United Nations, and global inequality. In the last years, his research focus has generally shifted from an American to an international history of ideas, becoming interested in the intellectual history of international poverty politics, and – increasingly – with the relationship between geographical anchorage and peoples’ views upon international inequality.
Christians book publications include the monograph Progressive Business: An Intellectual History of the Role of Business in Society (Oxford University Press 2015), the co-written Pengene og Livet (Informations Forlag 2015), and the co-edited books Amerikanske tænkere (Informations Forlag 2016), History of Economic Rationalities (Springer 2017), and Histories of Global Inequality: New Perspectives (Palgrave 2019). He has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Comparative Sociology, Management & Organizational History, European Journal of Social Theory and Ideas in History, edited or co-edited journal special issues in Distinktion and Slagmark, besides contributing with numerous book chapters to various anthologies, as well as with online publications and appearances in public radio and in other media. Christian has twice been awarded a Sapere Aude grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research.
For more information, please see his personal webpage.
Mélanie Lindbjerg Machado-Guichon
Mélanie is a PhD candidate in the research project ‘An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015’. Her primary country of study will be Ghana in relation to the African continent in general. Mélanie has a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and a master’s degree in International Studies, both from Aarhus University. During her studies in Anthropology she became interested in the significance of positionality – we are all situated beings with specific perspectives and outlooks on life. This has left her passionate about people’s different ways of understanding and perceiving the world we all live in. Her master’s degree in International Studies has given her a global perspective on top of her anthropological knowledge and made her familiar with working in an international and interdisciplinary environment. In July 2019, Mélanie handed in her Master Thesis “Artistic Greenland – the Artist’s Point of View”, which focused on artists, art, and art production in a Greenlandic, postcolonial setting. Moreover, throughout her education Mélanie has developed an interest in topics such as: global inequality, globalisation, postcolonialism, minorities, vulnerable/disadvantaged groups, and indigeneity.
Mélanie’s fields of interest are united in her PhD project, which focuses on Ghana, Ghanaian/African intellectuals, and their conceptualisations of global inequalities. Her project is one of four subprojects, which, as part of the overarching research project, seeks to generate an intellectual history of global inequality from 1960 to 2015. As a component of her project Mélanie plans to conduct field and interview-based research in Ghana. With this PhD project Mélanie also sees the opportunity to contribute to the field of African Intellectual History.
Sofía Mercader
Sofía is a Post-Doctoral fellow in the research project 'An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015'. While her primary country of study will be Argentina, she will also focus on discussions taking place in the Latin American subcontinent more generally. She will be working on the history of the concept of inequality through the analysis of a number of currents of thought in vogue since the 1960s, such as dependency and development theories, and Latin American Marxism. She will do so by offering an analysis of the writings and thinking of prominent intellectuals, such as Raúl Prebisch, Aldo Ferrer, and Juan Carlos Portantiero, among others. She will also focus on the study of the journal Desarrollo Económico (Economic Development, 1961-continues), a main publication on history, economics, and social sciences.
Sofía’s previous work has primarily focused on Argentine and Latin American intellectual culture, left-wing intellectuals, and Latin American feminism. She holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires and a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Warwick. In 2020, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her upcoming book ‘Punto de Vista’ and the Argentine Intellectual Left (Palgrave), based on her doctoral thesis, examines the late-twentieth century Argentine intellectual field and the history of left-wing intellectuals through the study of the cultural magazine Punto de Vista (1978-2008). Prior to joining the project, she taught at the University of Warwick and Coventry University. She has published articles and book reviews in peer reviewed journals in English and Spanish and has been awarded grants by the University of Warwick, the Society for Latin American Studies, and Princeton University Library.
Priyanka Jha
Priyanka is an associated researcher in the research project 'An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015'. Her primary country of study is India. Priyanka will be engaging with some of the key thinkers from India from the 1940s to 2015 and their positionalities on economic inequality, mapping the intellectual history of inequality in post-independent Modern India. Tracing indigenous thinking and native conceptions of inequality, she is also keen to examine the unique characteristics of post-colonial thinking, which contributes to the pursuit of a new global intellectual history. The axis of caste, class and gender becomes defining tropes in understanding inequality in her project. Priyanka will base the mapping of the intellectual history of inequality in India on the works and writings of key thinkers like Kamla Devi Chattopadhyay, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Ch. Charan Singh, Amartya Sen and Devaki Jain.
Trained as a Political Scientist, Priyanka has worked in the domain of Indian Political and Social Thought. She is interested in tracing the ways and manners in which ideas came to be shaped in Indian thinking. She has her doctoral degree from the Centre from Political Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and worked on the Politics of Culture and Religion in the shaping of normativity in India and other post-colonial South Asian nations. She has her Masters and M.Phil from the same university. She is highly interested in the quests of gendering intellectual history in South Asia, and engages with women thinkers and their contributions in the domain of ideas. Prior to joining the project, she taught at University of Delhi and Ambedkar University, Delhi, India. She has been the recipient of several fellowships and grants. She also has many publications in the form of articles in peer reviewed journals and contributed book chapters to several anthologies. Presently she is also working on her manuscript 'Thinking and Ideas in Modern India'.
Smilla Jensen
Smilla is a student assistant in the research project ’An Intellectual History of Global Inequality’. She holds a BSc in Psychology from Aarhus University, from where she became interested in historical dimensions of human practice and life. Therefore, she decided to make a shift in main subject to the History of Ideas, where she is currently studying for a bachelor’s degree. Smilla’s main interests are social and political ideas, especially regarding asymmetry in human relations such as inequality or discrimination, and that is why she wanted to be a part of the project. Earlier, she has worked with inequality research in the Danish healthcare system, and now she wants to expand her field of activity to a global world. Smilla will be assisting with basic research tasks.
Frederik Møller Rosendal
Frederik is a former student assistant in our research project. He has a background in history of ideas and philology and is currently studying his master’s degree at Aarhus University. Frederik has previously worked on conceptual history in a global perspective, and is particularly interested in how certain conceptualizations drive the development of ideas regarding economy and politics - nationally as well as globally. In 2022, Frederik became an intern at UNESCO in Paris.
Oliver Bugge Hunt
Oliver is co-editor of our Key Questions on Global Inequality Series, the co-author (with Christian Olaf Christiansen) of the article “How Climate Change Became a Matter of Global Social Justice” (Baggrund, 2021) (in Danish), and a former student assistant in our research project. He has a background in Philosophy and Cultural Analysis of Society and Economy and a Masters in Globalisation and Development from SOAS University of London. Throughout his studies, Oliver has taken particular interest in the economic and political dynamics that drives inequality, and this is why he wanted to be part of our research team. In 2021, Oliver became a PhD fellow at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, where his research focuses upon the politics of gas infrastructure as economies adopt more ambitious climate targets.
The project
What is the relationship between geographical anchoring (place), and how people have thought about international and global economic inequality? An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015 is a qualitative, humanistic research project that applies a transnational perspective on the intellectual history of inequality. We will investigate four countries (Argentina, Ghana, India, USA), four clusters of public intellectuals (such as economists, sociologists, philosophers, politicians and historians), combined with field studies. How has international economic inequality been conceptualized? What were the dominant past expectations for the future of international inequality? To which extent was economic inequality thought to be legitimate, just, useful?
The overall thesis of this project is that the importance of place for inequality thinking tended to shrink during the period from 1960 to 2015. The aim is to contribute with a new transnational knowledge about the intellectual history of inequality in different geographical and cultural contexts. We will turn the map of the world upside down: what does international inequality look like if you come from Ghana or Argentina compared to the US? The project will investigate links, differences and similarities between different intellectual traditions, as well as the circulation of inequality concepts and knowledge across countries. In collaboration with international colleagues, it aspires to create a unique transcultural and multi-linguistic knowledge about inequality concepts, contributing the fields of global conceptual and intellectual history, as well as to inequality studies more broadly.
Today, global inequality is one of the major challenges facing the world community. In 2015, the United Nations adopted a new set of world goals, including bringing down inequality (both within and between nations). By looking more deeply into the cultural and intellectual historical background, we as researches hope to deliver important inputs to these debates. For example, the project can help shed light on the cultural and ideological aspects of how relatively poor countries deal with high national inequality. At bottom, our interest springs from a relatively common and deep concern of the age we live in: why are our life opportunities so unequal in the (global) world we live in?
Take a look at our calendar
Researchers
Christian Olaf Christiansen
Christian is the principal investigator of ‘An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015’. His primary country of study will be the United States. He is an intellectual historian who focuses mainly on historicizing issues of pressing contemporary concern, such as ideas about the role of business in society, human rights, poverty alleviation at the United Nations, and global inequality. In the last years, his research focus has generally shifted from an American to an international history of ideas, becoming interested in the intellectual history of international poverty politics, and – increasingly – with the relationship between geographical anchorage and peoples’ views upon international inequality.
Christians book publications include the monograph Progressive Business: An Intellectual History of the Role of Business in Society (Oxford University Press 2015), the co-written Pengene og Livet (Informations Forlag 2015), and the co-edited books Amerikanske tænkere (Informations Forlag 2016), History of Economic Rationalities (Springer 2017), and Histories of Global Inequality: New Perspectives (Palgrave 2019). He has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Comparative Sociology, Management & Organizational History, European Journal of Social Theory and Ideas in History, edited or co-edited journal special issues in Distinktion and Slagmark, besides contributing with numerous book chapters to various anthologies, as well as with online publications and appearances in public radio and in other media. Christian has twice been awarded a Sapere Aude grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research.
For more information, please see his personal webpage.
Mélanie Lindbjerg Machado-Guichon
Mélanie is a PhD candidate in the research project ‘An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015’. Her primary country of study will be Ghana in relation to the African continent in general. Mélanie has a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and a master’s degree in International Studies, both from Aarhus University. During her studies in Anthropology she became interested in the significance of positionality – we are all situated beings with specific perspectives and outlooks on life. This has left her passionate about people’s different ways of understanding and perceiving the world we all live in. Her master’s degree in International Studies has given her a global perspective on top of her anthropological knowledge and made her familiar with working in an international and interdisciplinary environment. In July 2019, Mélanie handed in her Master Thesis “Artistic Greenland – the Artist’s Point of View”, which focused on artists, art, and art production in a Greenlandic, postcolonial setting. Moreover, throughout her education Mélanie has developed an interest in topics such as: global inequality, globalisation, postcolonialism, minorities, vulnerable/disadvantaged groups, and indigeneity.
Mélanie’s fields of interest are united in her PhD project, which focuses on Ghana, Ghanaian/African intellectuals, and their conceptualisations of global inequalities. Her project is one of four subprojects, which, as part of the overarching research project, seeks to generate an intellectual history of global inequality from 1960 to 2015. As a component of her project Mélanie plans to conduct field and interview-based research in Ghana. With this PhD project Mélanie also sees the opportunity to contribute to the field of African Intellectual History.
Sofía Mercader
Sofía is a Post-Doctoral fellow in the research project 'An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015'. While her primary country of study will be Argentina, she will also focus on discussions taking place in the Latin American subcontinent more generally. She will be working on the history of the concept of inequality through the analysis of a number of currents of thought in vogue since the 1960s, such as dependency and development theories, and Latin American Marxism. She will do so by offering an analysis of the writings and thinking of prominent intellectuals, such as Raúl Prebisch, Aldo Ferrer, and Juan Carlos Portantiero, among others. She will also focus on the study of the journal Desarrollo Económico (Economic Development, 1961-continues), a main publication on history, economics, and social sciences.
Sofía’s previous work has primarily focused on Argentine and Latin American intellectual culture, left-wing intellectuals, and Latin American feminism. She holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires and a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Warwick. In 2020, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her upcoming book ‘Punto de Vista’ and the Argentine Intellectual Left (Palgrave), based on her doctoral thesis, examines the late-twentieth century Argentine intellectual field and the history of left-wing intellectuals through the study of the cultural magazine Punto de Vista (1978-2008). Prior to joining the project, she taught at the University of Warwick and Coventry University. She has published articles and book reviews in peer reviewed journals in English and Spanish and has been awarded grants by the University of Warwick, the Society for Latin American Studies, and Princeton University Library.
Priyanka Jha
Priyanka is an associated researcher in the research project 'An Intellectual History of Global Inequality, 1960-2015'. Her primary country of study is India. Priyanka will be engaging with some of the key thinkers from India from the 1940s to 2015 and their positionalities on economic inequality, mapping the intellectual history of inequality in post-independent Modern India. Tracing indigenous thinking and native conceptions of inequality, she is also keen to examine the unique characteristics of post-colonial thinking, which contributes to the pursuit of a new global intellectual history. The axis of caste, class and gender becomes defining tropes in understanding inequality in her project. Priyanka will base the mapping of the intellectual history of inequality in India on the works and writings of key thinkers like Kamla Devi Chattopadhyay, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Ch. Charan Singh, Amartya Sen and Devaki Jain.
Trained as a Political Scientist, Priyanka has worked in the domain of Indian Political and Social Thought. She is interested in tracing the ways and manners in which ideas came to be shaped in Indian thinking. She has her doctoral degree from the Centre from Political Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and worked on the Politics of Culture and Religion in the shaping of normativity in India and other post-colonial South Asian nations. She has her Masters and M.Phil from the same university. She is highly interested in the quests of gendering intellectual history in South Asia, and engages with women thinkers and their contributions in the domain of ideas. Prior to joining the project, she taught at University of Delhi and Ambedkar University, Delhi, India. She has been the recipient of several fellowships and grants. She also has many publications in the form of articles in peer reviewed journals and contributed book chapters to several anthologies. Presently she is also working on her manuscript 'Thinking and Ideas in Modern India'.
Smilla Jensen
Smilla is a student assistant in the research project ’An Intellectual History of Global Inequality’. She holds a BSc in Psychology from Aarhus University, from where she became interested in historical dimensions of human practice and life. Therefore, she decided to make a shift in main subject to the History of Ideas, where she is currently studying for a bachelor’s degree. Smilla’s main interests are social and political ideas, especially regarding asymmetry in human relations such as inequality or discrimination, and that is why she wanted to be a part of the project. Earlier, she has worked with inequality research in the Danish healthcare system, and now she wants to expand her field of activity to a global world. Smilla will be assisting with basic research tasks.
Frederik Møller Rosendal
Frederik is a former student assistant in our research project. He has a background in history of ideas and philology and is currently studying his master’s degree at Aarhus University. Frederik has previously worked on conceptual history in a global perspective, and is particularly interested in how certain conceptualizations drive the development of ideas regarding economy and politics - nationally as well as globally. In 2022, Frederik became an intern at UNESCO in Paris.
Oliver Bugge Hunt
Oliver is co-editor of our Key Questions on Global Inequality Series, the co-author (with Christian Olaf Christiansen) of the article “How Climate Change Became a Matter of Global Social Justice” (Baggrund, 2021) (in Danish), and a former student assistant in our research project. He has a background in Philosophy and Cultural Analysis of Society and Economy and a Masters in Globalisation and Development from SOAS University of London. Throughout his studies, Oliver has taken particular interest in the economic and political dynamics that drives inequality, and this is why he wanted to be part of our research team. In 2021, Oliver became a PhD fellow at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, where his research focuses upon the politics of gas infrastructure as economies adopt more ambitious climate targets.
