Janet Abu-Lughod

professor, New School

Janet L. Abu-Lughod, née Lippman (born 1928) is an American sociologist with major contributions to World-systems theory and Urban sociology. Janet Abu-Lughod holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and University of Massachusetts. Her teaching career began at the University of Illinois, took her to the American University in Cairo, Smith College, and Northwestern University, where she taught for twenty years and directed several urban studies programmes. In 1987 she accepted a professorship in sociology and historical studies at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, from which she retired as professor emerita in 1998. She has published over a hundred articles and thirteen books dealing with urban sociology, the history and dynamics of the World System, and Middle Eastern cities, including an urban history of Cairo that is still considered one of the classic works on that city: Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious.