Lauren Benton, the Nelson O. Tyrone Jr. Professor of History and professor of law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, was named the recipient of the 2019 Toynbee Prize from the Toynbee Prize Foundation. The award is given biennially to a scholar who has made a significant contribution to the study of global history. Professor Benton will be honored and present a lecture at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago next January.
Dominic Sachsenmaier, President of the Toynbee Prize Foundation and Chair Professor of Modern China at the University of Göttingen in Germany, stated that “Lauren Benton has made enormous contributions to the global historical study of empires and international legal systems. We are delighted to award her the 2019 Toynbee Prize for the excellence and broad range of her global historical scholarship.”
Professor Benton is the author of co-author of four books and the co-editor of three other volumes. Her most recent book is Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800-1850 (Harvard University Press, 2016).
Professor Benton joined the faculty at Vanderbilt in 2015 after teaching at New York University for 12 years. There, she served as dean for the humanities and dean of the Graduate School. Dr. Benton is a graduate of Harvard University. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology and history from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.