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Saskia Sassen

society Maturity 13-18 Next article →

Saskia Sassen is a very important thinker who studies our changing world. She is a sociologist, which means she studies how people live together in groups.

Saskia Sassen at the Subversive Festival (cropped)
Saskia Sassen at the Subversive Festival (cropped)

Sassen looks at how different countries connect with each other. This big connection is called globalization. She also studies how people move from one country to another. Her work helps us understand how big cities change as the world gets more connected. She is a professor at Columbia University and the London School of Economics.

Sassen looks at many different things to see how they work together. She studies how money and workers move across the globe. She also looks at how new technology changes how governments rule.

NYC-Skyline-1
NYC-Skyline-1

Sassen wants to know how these changes affect life in big cities. She noticed that some countries might lose power to control these global shifts. She also studies how people move between nations, which is called transnationalism. Her goal is to show how these pieces fit into one big picture.

Sassen has had a very busy life of learning and teaching. She was born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1947. Her family moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1948. Because she lived in many places, she grew up speaking five different languages.

NYC-Skyline-1
NYC-Skyline-1

She studied in France, Italy, and Argentina. Later, she studied at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. She earned her Ph.D. there in 1974. She also earned a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Poitiers in 1974.

One of her biggest ideas came from a book she wrote in 1991.

NYC-Skyline-1
NYC-Skyline-1

The book is called "The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo." In this book, she explains why these three cities are so important to the world economy. She used the term "global city" to describe them. She updated this book in 2001 to include new information. Her ideas are so popular that her books have been translated into 21 different languages. This helps people all over the world read her work.

Because she has helped so many people learn, she has won many awards. In 2004, she received a special degree in urbanism from Delft University of Technology. She also won the Premio Princesa de Asturias in 2013.

Saskia Sassen at the Subversive Festival (cropped)
Saskia Sassen at the Subversive Festival (cropped)

Many other universities in Spain and Mexico gave her honors too. These awards show that people respect her hard work and her ideas. Today, her research continues to help us understand the complex world we live in.

406 words

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