August 15, 2006 | Faculty

Carruthers Named Fitzgerald Professor of Economic History

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Bruce G. Carruthers, professor of sociology at Northwestern University, has been named the Gerald F. and Marjorie G. Fitzgerald Professor of Economic History.

A member of the Northwestern University faculty since 1990, Carruthers chaired the department of sociology from 2004 until 2006 and previously was director of graduate studies for the department.

His research interests, which include historical, economic, and political sociology and the sociology of law, have been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the American Bar Foundation.

Carruthers has been honored for his work. He was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar in 2000-01, and he received fellowships to the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australia National University (2004) and to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2006-07).

He received a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2006. In 2005 he was elected to membership in the Sociological Research Association.

In 2005 Carruthers was also a visiting professor at the International Center for Business and Politics at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark.

Carruthers is the author of numerous articles, essays, book reviews and chapters and has written three books. These are: “City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolution” (1996), “Rescuing Business: The Making of Corporate Bankruptcy Law in England and the United States” (1998) and Economy/Society: Markets, Meanings and Social Structure” (2000).

He is currently working on two additional book projects, one of which examines the historical development of credit in Britain and the U.S. from the early-modern period to the 20th century. The other book focuses on changes in bankruptcy laws around the globe in the last 25 years, exploring the connection between law and globalization.

Carruthers chairs the Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. He also serves on the advisory boards for Socio-Economic Review and Annual Review of Sociology.