Directory

Biography

Richard P. Appelbaum, Ph.D., has been associated with Fielding Graduate University since shortly after it was founded, more than forty years ago, and currently serves as doctoral faculty in the School of Leadership Studies.

He is also Research Professor Emeritus, and former MacArthur Foundation Chair in Global and International Studies and Sociology, at UC Santa Barbara, where he served as co-principal Investigator for the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Nanotechnology in Society (http://www.cns.ucsb.edu/).

He received his B.A. from Columbia University, M.P.A. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has been a Simon Visiting Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Manchester, England, and an Honorary Visiting Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Hong Kong.

Dr. Appelbaum has received numerous awards and commendations for excellence in teaching, including the UCSB Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in the Social Sciences. He is an elected Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served as President of the Political Economy of the World-System Section of the American Sociological Association. He is on the Board of Consulting Editors of the Encyclopedia of Housing and the Encyclopedia of Global Studies.

Dr. Appelbaum has published extensively in the areas of social theory, urban sociology, public policy, the globalization of business, and the sociology of work and labor. In addition to numerous scholarly papers, he has published policy-related and opinion pieces in the Los Angeles Times and The American Prospect. His books include States and Economic Development in the Asian Pacific Rim (with Jeffrey Henderson; Sage, 1992); Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Garment Industry (with Edna Bonacich; University of California Press, 2000); Rules and Networks: The Legal Culture of Global Business Transactions (co-edited with William Felstiner and Volkmar Gessner; Oxford, England: Hart, 2001). For more publications, see Media, Links and Articles in the faculty profile.

Dr. Appelbaum is currently engaged in two principal research projects: a multi-disciplinary study of labor conditions in supply chain networks in the Asian-Pacific Rim, and a study of high technology development (focusing on nanotechnology) in China.