Sophus Reinert

Sophus Reinert is a Professor of Business Administration in the Business, Government, and the International Economy Unit, where he currently teaches a course on Globalization and Emerging Markets (GEM) in the MBA elective curriculum. He has also taught for the Summer Venture in Management Program, the PEEK Program, START, and the executive education General Management Program. Before joining HBS, he was a research fellow and an affiliated lecturer in history at Gonville & Caius College at the University of Cambridge (UK).

Professor Reinert studies the histories of capitalism, globalization, and political economy from the Renaissance to today’s emerging markets, focusing particularly on questions of international competition and the historical role played by governments in both economic development and decline. He is the author of Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy, published by Harvard University Press in 2011 and winner of the 2012 Spengler Prize, the 2012 EAEPE-Myrdal Prize, as well as the 2012 George L. Mosse Prize of the American Historical Association. He has edited several academic volumes on the history of political economy, and Harvard University Press published his The Academy of Fisticuffs: Political Economy and Commercial Society in Enlightenment Italy, in summer 2018. In addition to case-writing in emerging markets, and particularly in Africa and Asia, he is currently writing two books; one on sovereign wealth funds and another on how “economics” was first theorized in relation to Renaissance business practices.

Professor Reinert earned his Ph.D. in history at the University for Cambridge, together with an M.Phil. in political thought and intellectual history. As an undergraduate, he studied history at Cornell University. He has been a Carl Schurz Fellow at the Krupp Chair in Public Finance and Fiscal Sociology at the University of Erfurt, Germany, and a fellow of the Einaudi Foundation in Turin, Italy.

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) University of Cambridge (2005 — 2009)
• Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) University of Cambridge (2004 — 2005)
• Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Cornell University (2000 — 2003)

Companies

• T.J. Dermot Dunphy Professor of Business Administration Harvard Business School (2021)
• Professor Harvard Business School (2019 — 2021)
• Marvin Bower Associate Professor Harvard Business School (2016 — 2019)
• Assistant Professor Harvard Business School (2011 — 2016)
• Fellow Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge (2008 — 2011)
• Fellow Fondazione Luigi Einaudi (2007 — 2008)
• Carl Schurz Fellow at the Krupp Chair of Public Finance and Fiscal Sociology University of Erfurt (2003 — 2004)