Steven Pincus

Steven Pincus serves as the Bradford Durfee Professor of History at Yale University and Co-Director of CHESS (Center for Historical Enquiry & the Social Sciences). His academic career focuses on early modern British, Atlantic, and imperial history with particular emphasis on revolutions and state formation during the 17th-18th centuries.

Pincus is renowned for reinterpreting the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as the first modern revolution, fundamentally reshaping scholarly understanding of this pivotal event. His research spans economic, cultural, political, and intellectual dimensions of early modern empires, with significant contributions to comparative revolution studies and Atlantic World historiography. Current projects examine the Declaration of Independence, origins of the British Empire, and Britain's industrial divergence.

As Co-Director of CHESS, Pincus leads interdisciplinary initiatives bridging historical analysis with social science methodologies, fostering collaborative research that examines state formation, imperial development, and revolutionary processes through multiple disciplinary lenses.