Robert D. Putnam | Markle
Robert D. Putnam | Markle

Robert D. Putnam

Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University


Robert D. Putnam is Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the British Academy, and past president of the American Political Science Association. He has received numerous scholarly honors, including the Skytte Prize, the most prestigious global award in political science. He has written fourteen books, translated into more than twenty languages, including Bowling Alone and Making Democracy Work, both among the most cited publications in the social sciences in the last half century. His latest book, co-authored with David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, won the American Political Science Association’s 2011 Woodrow Wilson award as the best book in political science. He has consulted for the last three American presidents, the last three British prime ministers, the current French president, and hundreds of grassroots leaders and activists in many countries. He is now working on three major projects: (1) Inequality and opportunity: a growing class gap among American young people and the implications for social mobility; (2) The changing role of religion in the United Kingdom and the U.S.; and (3) The social consequences of hard times in the United Kingdom and the U.S.