The Birth Lottery of History

Robert J. Sampsonis the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard University. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is the 2011 winner of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology and author of three award-winning books and numerous articles on crime, the life course, urban inequality, and the changing social structure of cities. Sampson’s last book, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect, is based on research from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. He is currently conducting a follow-up study covering 25 years in the lives of study participants who came of age at different times during the social transformation of crime, punishment, and inequality over the last three decades.

Nicola Laceyis School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy. From 1998 to 2010 she held a Chair in Criminal Law and Legal Theory at LSE; she returned to LSE in 2013 after spending three years as Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford. She is also an Associate of the International Inequalities Institute at LSE. She has held a number of visiting appointments, most recently at Harvard Law School. She is an Honorary Fellow of New College Oxford and of University College Oxford; a Fellow of the British Academy; and a member of the Board of Trustees of the British Museum.

Peter Trubowitz (@ptrubowitz) is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Phelan US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House.