Professor James A. Robinson, The University of Chicago, “The Narrow Corridor”.

The inaugural Queen’s Annual Politics Lecture will be delivered by Professor James Robinson, the Reverend Dr Richard L Pearson Professor of Global Conflict and Director of the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He is also Institute Director of The Pearson Institute for the Study of Resolution of Global Conflicts. Until 2015 he was Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government, and until 2014 David Florence Professor of Government, at Harvard University. 

Thursday 11 March 2021, 4-5.30pm, online. 

Lecture: 4-5pm, streamed via YouTube, link to follow.

Discussion: 5-5.30pm, Chaired by Dr Stefan Andreasson, via MS Teams. 

Please complete Registration Form for discussion by 4pm on Wednesday 10 March 2021. 

Professor Robinson obtained his B.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1982), his M.A. from the University of Warwick (1986), and Ph.D. from Yale University (1993), all in economics.

He is the author (with Daron Acemoglu) of Economic Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Why Nations Fail: The Origins and Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Crown, 2012), and The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty (Penguin, 2019). He is also the co-editor of several books, including among others Africa’s Development in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Natural Experiments in History (Harvard University Press).

The Queen’s Annual Politics Lecture represent Politics and International Relations as an established and distinguished discipline at Queen’s University Belfast. The lecture showcases cutting edge research by world-leading scholars and practitioners whose expertise is widely disseminated and prominent in public discourses worldwide. In doing so it highlights their ground-breaking research and global engagement for the benefit of Queen’s students and staff, the wider Northern Ireland community and a global audience.

The Queen’s Annual Politics Lecture series is generously supported by the R M Jones Memorial Lecture Fund.

View profile of Professor Robinson