Amanda Behm Email & Phone Number

I am the associate director for research and engagement at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative. BESI launched in 2023 as an interdisciplinary, solutions-focused center at UC Berkeley, bringing together scholars and practitioners to confront urgent social risks and inequalities. Among other projects, BESI teams are developing research and policy agendas that champion healthy democracy and a just economy, explore the imperatives of decarbonization, and confront the promise and peril of disruptive technologies. My work at Berkeley builds on an 18-year career as a professor, researcher, project lead, author, and administrator. Most recently, I was Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in History at the University of York, where I investigated global and imperial histories of democracy, migration, and ideas, and supervised undergraduate and graduate research. My current publications scope the role of California in the 19th-20th century British imperial system (surprise! -- with thanks to colleagues at the German Historical Institute/Oxford University Press) and rethink the relationship between the modern British empire and democracy (with Profs. David Thackeray and Richard Toye at Exeter; OUP again). Before York, I was the associate director of International Security Studies at Yale. I have taught at York, Yale, and UC Berkeley, and written a book on racial politics and the ethics of history in imperial Britain.