Saskia Sassen is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, Co-Chair, Committee on Global Thought at Columbia, and Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Her research and writing focuses on globalization, immigration, global cities, new networked technologies, and changes within the liberal state that result from current transnational conditions. For UNESCO Dr. Sassen has completed a five-year project on sustainable human settlement with a network of researchers and activists in over 30 countries. Her books have been translated into twenty-one languages. Her recent books include Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2008); A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007), and the 4th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2012). Among older books is The Global City (Princeton University Press 1991/2001). Her forthcoming book is Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (Harvard University Press 2014). She has received diverse awards, from multiple doctor honoris causa to being chosen as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy, and receiving the 2013 winner of the Principe de Asturias Prize for the Social Sciences, Spain’s most prestigious award in the social sciences. She served on the faculty of Session 327, Involuntary Migration, in 1995 and Session 378, The Entrepreneurial City, in 2000.