Krishan Kumar
Fellow
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia
Krishan Kumar is a University Professor, as well as William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. He was previously Professor of Social and Political Thought at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Cambridge and his postgraduate education at the London School of Economics.
Mr. Kumar has at various times been a Talks Producer at the BBC, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, and has held Visiting Professorships at Bristol University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Central European University, Prague, the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He has also been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Among his publications are Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Post-Industrial Society; Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times; The Rise of Modern Society; From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society; 1989: Revolutionary Ideas and Ideals; The Making of English National Identity; Visions of Empire: How Five Imperial Regimes Shaped the World”; and Empires: A Historical and Political Sociology.
Mr. Kumar’s current interests focus on empires and imperial peoples. Related interest include nationalism and national identity, Europe, global history, and problems of historical sociology.
Selected Publications
Empires: A Historical and Political Sociology. Polity Press, 2020.
Visions of Empire: How Five Imperial Regimes Shaped the World. Princeton University Press, 2017.
The Idea of Englishness. Ashgate, 2015.
From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society: New Theories of the Contemporary World. Wiley-Blackwell, 2004.
The Making of English National Identity. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
1989: Revolutionary Ideas and Ideals. University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Public and Private in Thought and Practice. Edited by Krishan Kumar and Jeff Weintraub, University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Utopias and the Millennium. Edited by Krishan Kumar and Stephen Bann, Reaktion Books, 1993.
Utopianism. Open University Press, 1991; University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
The Rise of Modern Society: Aspects of the Social and Political Development of the West. Basil Blackwell, 1988.
Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Basil Blackwell, 1987.
Dilemmas of Liberal Democracies: Studies in Fred Hirsch’s Social Limits to Growth. Edited by Krishan Kumar and Adrian Ellis, Tavistock Publications, 1983.
Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Post-Industrial Society. Allen Lane: The Penguin Press, 1978; Penguin Books, 1978.
Revolution: The Theory and Practice of a European Idea. Edited by Krishan Kumar, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971.