Keynote
We are pleased to inform you that Professor Sven Beckert will deliver the keynote lecture at the Posthumus Conference 2026.
Professor Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University. His research and teaching center on the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on the history of capitalism, including its economic, social, political and global dimensions. Professor Beckert teaches courses on the political economy of modern capitalism, the history of American capitalism, Gilded Age America, labor history, global capitalism and the history of European capitalism. Together with a group of students he has written on the historical connections between Harvard and slavery and published Harvard and Slavery: Seeking a Forgotten History.
His most recent publication is Capitalism: A Global History, which was published in November 2025 with publisher Penguin Group USA.
Professor Beckert is also co-chair of the Program on the Study of Capitalism at Harvard University, co-chair of the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History (WIGH) and co-editor of a series of books at Princeton University Press on ‘America in the World’.