Aaron Benanav

Aaron Benanav is an economic historian and social theorist. Currently, he holds a postdoctoral researcher position at Humboldt University of Berlin and is the academic coordinator for the research unit “Re-Allocation” in the Cluster of Excellence “SCRIPTS: Contestations of the Liberal Script,” a seven-year project funded by the German Research Foundation. Benanav also serves as an editorial board member for the journal International Labor and Working Class History.

Benanav’s research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century global economic history, economic development, labor market dynamics, unemployment, and inequality. His first book, Automation and the Future of Work, appeared with Verso Books in November 2020. Benanav is working on two further book projects. One concerns the idea of a “post-scarcity” economics. The other examines the global history of unemployment since World War II.

Before joining Humboldt, Benanav was a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He holds a PhD and an MA in History from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in History from UChicago.