Niall Ferguson

The Right Honourable, Sir Niall Ferguson OBE, FRSE
Ferguson in 2017
Born	Niall Campbell Ferguson (1964-04-18) 18 April 1964 (age 60) Glasgow, Scotland
Citizenship	United Kingdom United States
Spouses	Sue Douglas ​ ​ (m. 1994; div. 2011)​ Ayaan Hirsi Ali ​ (m. 2011)​
Children	5
Academic background
Education	Magdalen College, Oxford (MA, DPhil) University of Hamburg
Thesis	Business and Politics in the German Inflation (1989)
Doctoral advisor	Norman Stone
Influences	A. J. P. Taylor
Academic work
Discipline	International history Economic history
Institutions	University of Cambridge University of Oxford New York University Harvard University London School of Economics Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Doctoral students	Tyler Goodspeed
Notable works	Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003) Civilisation: the West and the Rest (2011)
Niall Ferguson's voice Recorded June 2012 from the BBC Radio 4 programme the Reith Lectures
Website	www.niallferguson.com

Sir Niall Campbell Ferguson FRSE (/ˈniːl/; born 18 April 1964)^[1] is a Scottish–American historian who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.^[2][3] Previously, he was a professor at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, New York University, a visiting professor at the New College of the Humanities, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He was a visiting lecturer at the London School of Economics for the 2023/24 academic year and at Tsinghua Universty, China in 2019-20.^[4][5] He is a co-founder of the University of Austin, Texas.^[6]

Ferguson writes and lectures on international history, economic history, financial history and the history of the British Empire and American imperialism.^[7] He holds positive views concerning the British Empire.^[8] In 2004, he was one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.^[9] Ferguson has written and presented numerous television documentary series, including The Ascent of Money, which won an International Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2009.^[10] In 2024 he was knighted by King Charles III for services to literature.^[11]

Ferguson has been a contributing editor for Bloomberg Television and a columnist for Newsweek.^[12] He began writing a semi-monthly column for Bloomberg Opinion in June 2020 and has also been a regular columnist at The Spectator and the Daily Mail.^[13][14] In 2021 he became a joint-founder of the new University of Austin. Since June 2024 he is a bi-weekly columnist at The Free Press.^[15] Ferguson has also contributed articles to many journals including Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy.^[16][17] He has been described as a conservative and called himself a supporter of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.^[18][19]