The 2020 Edgar de Picciotto International Prize was awarded to Saskia Sassen during the opening lecture of the academic year on 15 September.
Saskia Sassen | September 15 | Graduate Institute Geneva
Saskia Sassen is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a Member of Columbia University’s Committee on Global Thought, which she chaired until 2015. She is a student of cities, immigration, and states in the world economy, with inequality, gendering and digitization three key variables running though her work.
Over 20 years of research, she has published eight books and is the editor or co-editor of four books translated into over twenty languages. In addition, she has received many awards and honors, among them, multiple doctor honoris causa, the 2013 Principe de Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences, an election to the Royal Academy of the Sciences of the Netherlands and made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government. She has also been a committed and influential participant in the public debate, appearing in many journals The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Die Zeit, The Financial Times, among others.
On this occasion, Professor Sassen delivered the opening lecture of the new academic year by video conference entitled “Can Complexity Camouflage Violence”. Her lecture focused on modes of power, and how those that we think of as positive should increasingly be recognised as acts of violence. Focusing on the sector of high finance, Professor Sassen stated that “the intermediary is the actor in our economy that rarely loses. The one that end up losing are the originator and the final buyer.”
Originally published by Graduate Institute Geneva. Read the full report here.