LSE mosaic
Five LSE academics have become Fellows of the British Academy, in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the humanities and social sciences.
The British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is an independent fellowship of over 1400 world-leading scholars, an international funding body for research, and a seminal forum for intellectual engagement.
Professor Laura Bear, Professor Catherine Boone, Professor Vernon Henderson and Professor Jouni Kuha are among the 84 distinguished scholars who have been elected as new Fellows. Baroness Minouche Shafik, Director of LSE, has also received an Honorary Fellowship.
Welcoming the Fellows, the new President of the British Academy and LSE's Strategic Director of Innovation, Professor Julia Black, said:
“As the new President of the British Academy, it gives me great pleasure to welcome this new cohort of Fellows, who are as impressive as ever and remind us of the rich and diverse scholarship and research undertaken within the SHAPE disciplines – the social sciences, humanities and the arts. I am very much looking forward to working with them on our shared interests.
“The need for SHAPE subjects has never been greater. As Britain recovers from the pandemic and seeks to build back better, the insights from our diverse disciplines will be vital to ensure the health, wellbeing and prosperity of the UK and will continue to provide the cultural and societal enrichment that has sustained us over the last eighteen months. Our new Fellows embody the value of their subjects and I congratulate them warmly for their achievement.”
Baroness Minouche Shafik, Director of LSE, is to be elected to the Fellowship in recognition of her contributions to international development, globalisation and the environment, and the relationship between economic and social policy.
Laura Bear, Professor of Anthropology, is to be elected to the Fellowship in recognition of her contributions to the anthropology of the economy, bureaucracy, infrastructures, and time – particularly in South Asia and the UK.
Catherine Boone, Professor of Comparative Politics, is to be elected to the Fellowship in recognition of her contributions to comparative political economy – with a focus on African and other late-developing countries; property rights institutions and land politics; political effects of uneven economic geography and spatial inequality.
Vernon Henderson, School Professor of Economic Geography, is to be elected to the Fellowship in recognition of his contributions to the economics of urbanisation, including the evolutions of city systems and the built environment within cities, as related to institutional structures – with a current focus on China and sub-Saharan Africa.
Jouni Kuha, Professor of Statistics, is to be elected to the Fellowship in recognition of his contributions to social statistics, statistical methods for the analysis of measurement problems, analysis of survey data and applications in the social sciences.