Charles Tilly, pioneering historian, social scientist and authority on European political change, has joined the faculty.

  His appointment as the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science was made by the Columbia Trustees and announced by President Rupp.

Charles Tilly, the recently appointed Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science.

  Tilly, 67, joins Columbia after 12 years at the New School for Social Research, where he was University Distinguished Professor and directed the Center for Studies of Social Change. He will teach in Columbia's sociology and political science departments.

  An internationally-recognized authority on long-term social processes, Tilly has examined military, demographic, economic, urban and political change in Europe and North America from the Middle Ages to the present. He is the author or co-author of more than 20 books, including Citizenship, Identity and Social History, (1995) and Durable Inequality, forthcoming from the University of California Press.

  David Cohen, Columbia's Vice President for Arts and Sciences, said: "We are indeed delighted to have attracted a scholar of Tilly's remarkable accomplishment and distinction. Among the highest priorities of the Arts and Sciences is the enhancement of the social sciences. Tilly is one of those uncommon individuals whose arrival will significantly strengthen not just a single department but most of our departments in this essential area."

  Tilly has focused his inquiry on large-scale social change and its relationship to popular collective action, especially in western Europe since 1500.

  The Buttenwieser Professorship was established in 1958 with a gift from longtime trustee Benjamin J. Buttenwieser, CC'19, in honor of his father.