Ferguson’s academic career started at the University of Oxford, where he studied economics from 1983 to 1986 at Magdalen College. While Ferguson remained in academia as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Cambridge, a fellow and professor at the University of Oxford, and professor at New York University, he firmly established himself as a modern-day public intellectual. Since 2009, he has published several best-selling books, including “The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World” and “Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World”. He has now published fourteen books, regularly contributes to US and European radio and television, and is a Senior Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He is famous for his provocative views on topics ranging from economic history to imperialism to British and American foreign policy.
The historian has over 240 journalistic articles listed on his website, niallferguson.com, which cover topics that include international politics, economics, and history. He has written a number of controversial pieces in the United States mainstream media, including “The Real Obama Doctrine” in the Wall Street Journal and “Why Barack Obama Needs To Go”, which made the cover story of Newsweek in August 2012.
In addition to his presence in mainstream journalism, Ferguson has also written several biographies of famous historical figures. His first biography spotlighted Siegmund Warburg, a famous banker who played an important role in the development of merchant banking. He has also written a chronicle of the Rothschild family and just published the first volume of a biography of Henry Kissinger, who provided Ferguson exclusive access to his White House diaries, letters and archives. He wrote on his Facebook page that his “first task will be to complete the second volume of my biography of Henry Kissinger rather more rapidly than the first”.
When commenting on his transition, Ferguson wrote the following: “I’m also looking forward immensely to participating in the Hoover Institution’s work as I’ve always been inspired by Herbert Hoover’s vision of an institution dedicated to the study of war and peace and the upholding of individual freedom and representative government. This is also a chance for me to get a closer view and, I hope, a better understanding of the extraordinary things that are going on at Stanford and in Silicon Valley. The economic historian in me cannot help but be fascinated.” Given his important contributions to economical, political, and historical debate in the 21st century, the Stanford Review looks forward to Niall Ferguson’s contributions to the Hoover Institution.