Dr Ben Zdencanovic

Ben Zdencanovic (pronounced sten-CHAN-oh-vich) is Assistant Professor of U.S. History at the University of Cambridge. He is a historian of the United States in the world, political economy, and social policy. He received his PhD with distinction from Yale University in 2019, where his dissertation was the winner of the Edwin W. Small Prize. Prior to coming to Cambridge, he taught at the University of Chicago and held postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA and the Yale Jackson School for Global Affairs. 

His first book, Island of Enterprise: The United States in a World of Welfare, 1940–1955, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press, and he is working on a new book project entitled The Cold War on Poverty: Race, Labor, and Manpower in the U.S. Warfare/Welfare State. His research has appeared in the Journal of Transatlantic Studies, the Radical History Review, Diplomatic History, and elsewhere. He also writes for broader audiences in outlets such as the Boston Review, TIME, and the Washington Post. 

Ben's writing and research have been funded by such sources as the White House Historical Association, the Roosevelt and Kennedy presidential libraries, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In addition to Yale’s Small Prize, his work has won multiple prizes and awards, including the D.C. Watt Prize from the Transatlantic Studies Association, the Most Outstanding Paper Prize from the American Political History Institute, the Stuart L. Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the $30,000 Truman Library Scholar’s Award for excellence in research on the politics and policy of the Truman era.