The Global Left
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Immanuel Wallerstein was Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Yale University from 2000 until his death in 2019. From 1976 to 1999, he was Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University (SUNY), where he was also a founder and director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. From 1975 until his death, he was Senior Research Scholar at the Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris, and intermittently served as Directeur d'études associé at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He held positions at many universities worldwide throughout his career and was awarded 15 honorary degrees. Wallerstein served as President of the International Sociological Association from 1994 to 1998 and received the Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association in 2003. In 2014, the International Sociological Association awarded him the first ever Award for Excellence in Research and Practice. During the 1990s, he chaired the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, whose object was to indicate a direction for social scientific inquiry for the next 50 years. His books, which have been translated into dozens of languages, include the world-renowned four-volume study, The Modern World-System, and, cowritten with Étienne Balibar, Race, Nation, Class. He is considered to this day one of the most influential sociologists of his era.