Aaron Benanav

Aaron Benanav is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. As a historian, sociologist, and economic theorist, Benanav's interdisciplinary research examines automation's impact on employment, global unemployment trends since 1940, and alternative economic systems. His work challenges conventional narratives about technological unemployment by analyzing structural economic factors driving labor market precarity.

Benanav's research spans critical theory, historical analyses of economic development, and futures of work in post-scarcity economies. He explores how economic planning and democratic politics could transform labor relations in increasingly automated economies. His scholarship combines quantitative economic analysis with theoretical frameworks from critical social theory to examine the political economy of work.

Benanav has received numerous fellowships including a 2024-25 residential fellowship at the New Institute in Hamburg and leads a University of Chicago research project on economic planning and democratic politics. He serves on editorial boards of New Left Review and International Labor and Working-Class History and publishes widely in academic and public intellectual forums.