Capstone: Historical Biography

Ariane Liazos is a research advisor in the social sciences and lecturer at the Harvard Extension School. She studies political institutions and reform movements in American history. She is also interested in the relationship between academia and public activism. She has previously taught in the history department at Harvard University, the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard, the Harvard College Writing Program, and the Princeton Writing Program. She holds a bachelor's degree in history and political science from Swarthmore College and a master's degree and PhD in history from Harvard University. She recently published Reforming the City: The Contested Origins of Urban Government, 1890-1930 (Columbia University Press, 2020). This book explores urban reform in the progressive era, examining the ways in which reformers, social scientists, and citizens across the country attempted to create new political institutions that embodied changing ideals of democracy. With Theda Skocpol and Marshall Ganz, she is co-author of What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Orders and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Princeton University Press, 2008), winner of the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award from the Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the American Sociological Association. She has also authored numerous articles for journals and magazines. She has received commendations for Distinguished Teaching Performance from the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, certificates of Teaching Excellence from the Bok Center, and a Teaching Innovator Prize from Activity-Based Learning Connect at Harvard University.